Arizona: Into the beautiful west

Arizona's striking Monument Valley will be instantly recognisable to Western fans. Photo / Thinkstock

A visit to the USA's famous Monument Valley is an awe-inspiring experience, writes Ellen Creager.

It was 7am when the van became stuck in the sand, the temperature was zero and it was a little bit dark.

My sister and I got out of the battered vehicle and stomped around to keep warm amid the sharp grey-green sagebrush and snakeweed. Otherworldly spires in the distance were silhouetted by the impending sunrise. All was silent in this magnificent Navajo tribal park along the Utah-Arizona border.

Then I heard clanking. It was the driver, Don, trying to jack up the rickety Dodge Ram van's right rear tyre in the deep sand of the off-road trail. He trudged out of the ditch and called someone on his mobile.

He said, "I knew I should have brought my own truck, but they made me take this one."

He didn't say much else.

He tried driving us out of the ditch, half-heartedly, a few more times. Then he called the tribal park's road assistance, a friend with a truck.

Outside the van, my sister and the driver stood patiently and silently in the crisp splendour of Navajo country.

Visiting Monument Valley has been a dream of mine for at least three years. A photograph of Monument Valley's awesome topaz and sapphire-coloured landscape is thumbtacked to the bulletin board next to my desk. The park's three-year-old The View hotel has garnered rave reviews for its service and vistas from every room.

It's not surprising that a Navajo blessing song goes: the Earth is beautiful. The Earth is beautiful. The Earth is beautiful.

Monument Valley is so iconic that anyone who ever saw a movie will recognise it. It's the place where Forrest Gump tyres of running and says, "Think I'll go home now."

It's the place where sandstone buttes and strange-shaped spires stand like beautiful monuments carved by God. It's the place that has been the backdrop for famous Westerns, from John Wayne's first film, Stagecoach, in 1939 to Johnny Depp's bomb The Lone Ranger this year.

Operated by the Navajo Nation, the park has excellent, well-paved entrance roads. However, the 27km loop tour inside the park has dirt roads that are really, really terrible, so terrible they recommend you do not drive your own vehicle unless it is four-wheel drive, and certainly do not go off-trail lest you get stuck in sand or tumble into a ditch.

Tours are operated independently by Navajo vendors, so you deal directly with each vendor and get what driver and vehicle they offer - rickety van, nice truck, chilly open-sided vehicle or sturdy jeep.

And you really do need to do the tour if you want to see the park's hidden wonders, which was why I was on this sunrise tour in the middle of nowhere, tapping my foot.

Eventually, we got out of there. After an hour, a friend of Don's came with a big Chevy and towed the van out in two minutes, and away we went.

And Don didn't scrimp on the tour. We started near Totem Pole, a famous spire that is one feature of Monument Valley's unique geology. Rocks you see today are about 160 million years old, formed when water, wind, volcanic eruptions and an uplifting of the Earth's crust created what look like statues and monuments across a vast plain.

In the valley, we saw Anasazi rock drawings of animals, echoes of an ancient Southwest people who lived here as long ago as 1300. They vanished, long before the Navajo arrived 400 years ago.

The van bumped along and made it safely to two iconic outposts that have famous openings in the rock - Sun's Eye, surrounded with stripes on the rock that look like eyelashes, and Ear-in-the-Wind, in the shape of a human ear.

We passed buttes shaped like elephants and camels and the twin buttes Right Mitten and Left Mitten (eerily shaped like Michigan). The van shuddered on sandy roads past a trio of spires called the Three Sisters, and past mesas as big as whole city blocks.

Visitors used to the emptiness of national parks might find it jarring, but people live in Monument Valley. Some Navajo clans still dwell in tiny enclaves, and their trailers are dots in the landscape - but a definite human presence.

From the valley, we also could spot The View hotel in the far distance. Low-slung and tan-coloured, it was nearly invisible. Which is exactly as the hotel designers planned it.

Finally, on a high cliff, we stood at John Ford's Point, where the movie director liked to stand when orchestrating his magnificent Westerns and where today you can take a picture of a horse in front of the scenery for $US2. A local vendor was struck by lightning and killed at that spot in 2006.

We got back to our hotel an hour late, and I went in for breakfast, I realised it didn't matter, the delay or the ditch.

What mattered was, the Earth is beautiful.

CHECKLIST

Getting there: Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park is 500km north of Phoenix, Arizona: a five-and-a-half hour drive. Along the way are Sedona and Flagstaff and the Navajo towns of Tuba City and Kayenta. The park is open year-round.

Accommodation: The View hotel.

Further information: See DiscoverAmerica.com.

- MCT