Monument Valley - Part I

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park is barely on the Arizona side of the Arizona-Utah boarder and the day trip from Monticello UT to Monument Valley was so eventful that I am doing two posts about it. Today the focus is on the road trip down and back; it took just under 2 hours each way. Blanding is the only town of any size along the way; the visitor center there has a Navajo loom set up in the museum area. Mexican Hat is at the place where the road crosses the San Juan River. There are two distinctive rock formations along with way: Mexican Hat just north of Mexican Hat and Navajo Twins near Bluff. I’ve included the images I’ve captured of them in the slide show below.

Edge of Cedars State Park - Utah

The Edge of Cedars State Park is located in Blanding, Utah (south of Moab in the Four Corners region). It’s one of the few AAA ‘gems’ that is not a National Park --- so it was open in early October when I was in Utah. It is a place worth the stop even if the parks are open and I’ve lined up 4 posts about it. I’ve planned posts on pots, rock art, and sculpture from the museum for upcoming days; today are some of my favorite things about the park that don’t fit in those categories.

One of my favorite things from the museum - beautiful and unusual - is a necklace made from insect legs. The necklace was found in a stash of illegally collected artifacts but there was a bracelet found (and the location well documented) that looked very similar. Were they ever a set?

Behind the museum are a restored 1,000 year old kiva and hummocks of the unexcavated ruins of the rest of the village inhabited by ancestors of Puebloan peoples from AD 825-1125. We braved the cold breeze the day we were there to walk around the interpretive loop (and down into the kiva) - no regrets!

The materials used by ancient peoples (aside from clay which will be the topic of a later post) were highlighted in the exhibits and some of them surprised me. The yucca fibers look like blonde hair. The broken pot that still holds the mesh of beads and rope someone long ago stuffed into it reminds us how pottery was used for storage of just about everything. And turkey feathers were used to construct blankets! Juniper bark was twisted to make mats. Macaw feathers were used to make a sash; the top part of the sash is squirrel fur (from a species found in northern Arizona/southern Utah) so the sash may have been made in the same area rather than made somewhere else and traded into the area; there are macaw skeletons found in some ruins. There was a set of stone knives with handles; the dry climate of the area preserves many items that would have decayed in other climates.

Enjoy the slide show from the Edge of Cedars State Park.