Valley of the Gods (June 2005)

When I was about to leave Natural Bridges National Monument to head home, I talked with the ranger at the Visitor Center to get his recommendations of some places I could go to learn a little more about past Indians cultures. I had considered going to the Four Corners, but he said it was just a marker of the intersection of 4 states, with shopping in the vicinity. His recommendation was to see Wupatki National Monument, which would be directly along the way back to California. Finally, he said if I were not afraid of driving on steep mountain road, I ought to drive through Valleys of the Gods to see many interesting buttes that had associated Indian folklores. Having adventurous blood, I felt that would be a nice way to cap my trip and decided to follow his suggestion, knowing nothing more than a short paragraph about the couple of places I was about to see. So within that one day, I drove to Valley of the Gods, Monument Valley, Wupatki and Sunset Crater national monuments, and finally checked in a hotel in Arizona not too far from the California border.

The first 20 miles or so on highway 261 was uneventful. There was hardly any soul on the road but occasional cars coming from the reverse direction. There was no one driving the same way. Then there were warning signs of steep grade. It turned out that the warning was appropriate. Much of the 3-mile descent of a thousand feet drop was dirt road with many switchbacks and grade as steep as 10%. I wound up driving in first gear while applying occasional breaking to slow the vehicle to a safer speed. The reward for taking this road was panoramic view of hundreds of miles around as well as of the Valley of the Gods directly below.

Shortly after getting to the valley floor, I took another dirt road turnoff to Valleys of the Gods. This preserve is managed by BLM. It is not well known and much less traveled than the famous Navajo Monument Valley to the South. After the trip, I tried to research names of the buttes in the park and found very little about it. It was impossible to find any site with informative data of the park, including BLM that is supposed to manage it. An attempt to link to a BLM page that describes some buttes at this park returned a broken link and an apology from BLM! It was fortunate that I took a picture of the map at the entrance, since I later found nothing on the Web. I'm posting it to help others who may want to make the trip. Having gone to both this and Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, I actually prefer this smaller monument. It is devoid of any commercial enterprise, except one lonely bed-and-breakfast at the entrance. In fact, there was not have any sign of civilization aside from the 17-mile dirt road winding through.

There was hardly any soul in the vicinity. During the 2 hours I spent driving through this dirt road, I counted just a handful of vehicles passing by. The 17-mile was drivable but rough in places. There were a few places where I had to drive through washes that would be treacherous during a rainstorm. The towering rock formations transformed themselves with different lighting conditions and from different viewing angles. A fin from one angle turned to a needle from another. Without an actual tour pamphlet, I did not know for sure what I was looking at. Only later that I found out names of some of the buttes. As I find out more about this park or if others tell me, I will post updates.

Here is the link to some of the pictures of Valley of the Gods. This was a commuting day, so lighting condition at all of the park except Sunset Crater was less than ideal for photographic purposes.