Postcards from the Road #1

Prescott, AZ, Monument Valley and Moab, UT, with more to come

We’re on the road again! Today marks the end of the first week of our monthlong journey from Southern California to the Badlands of South Dakota and then back again. I’m traveling with my husband Jeff, who is gathering material for his PhotowalksTV YouTube channel. I’m taking the ride for the fun of it and to capture a few memorable photos from the road. Over the next four weeks or so, I’ll post a few highlights, with a plan to fill in the gaps in a longer piece in August when we’re home again, hopefully with a cool breeze blowing in off the Pacific!

Prescott, AZ

First stop: The Palace Restaurant and Saloon on Whiskey Row, Prescott, Arizona, the state’s oldest business and bar and once the favorite watering hole of some famous characters, including Earp brothers Wyatt and Virgil; Doc Holliday, and his common-law wife, Big Nose Kate. The ornate bar survived a fire that leveled most of Prescott’s downtown, including the Palace, in 1900.

We started our trip in Prescott, a town of almost 50,000 people in northern Arizona, about a seven-hour car ride from our home. It still sees the most action along one downtown block called Whiskey Row. A visit to its saloons summons up images of the gold miners, gunslingers and gamblers of the late 19th century, with plenty of mementos and photos lining the walls in tribute to that tough-looking bunch. When we were there, a mostly peaceable crowd of tourists and locals was enjoying a few nights (and days) out on the town.

The Palace Restaurant and Saloon; lawman and gambler Wyatt Earp, and the staircase to the one-time brothel.

No place on Whiskey Row feels more authentic than the Palace Restaurant and Saloon, which dates back to 1877, with regulars visitors like the legendary gunfighter, gambler and dentist, Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp and his brothers Virgil and Morgan, all of whom figured in the famous Shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, AZ.

Prescott's rodeo, billed as the world's oldest happens each July; a whiskey mule cocktail at the Palace, and a busy street in the center of downtown Prescott.

Next, it was north some 273 miles to Monument Valley on the Utah-Arizona border.

Monument Valley

West Mitten and East Mitten, known collectively as “The Mittens” because of their thumb-like promontories, and Merrick Butte, the famous trio of sandstone formations, as seen at sunrise from the balcony of our room at The View Hotel.

We could only afford two nights at The View Hotel, the lovely and aptly named hotel that opened in December 2008 and is the only one located inside the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, which isn’t part of the National Park System. You pay an entry fee to the Navajo (many call themselves Diné, pronounced “dee-nee”—meaning “people”), and guests usually hire a guide to see the wonders inside the park—which we did and found the price for the 3-hour tour—$150 each—well worth it. Our guide, Will Cowboy (yes, that’s really his name!), picked us up in a six-seat wagon attached to the back of a truck at 5:10 a.m. We took a ride along the bumpy terrain, stopping at key points where our guide shared colorful tales of the park and its sandstone buttes and even sang us a traditional Navajo song under an echoey rock arch. Many of the iconic red sandstone formations are featured in TV shows, commercials and movies, including several John Wayne films with the great director John Ford, most notably Stagecoach, which turned Wayne into a star. Many of the locals, including some of Will Cowboy’s relatives going back a couple of generations, served as extras.

Still with John Wayne and Henry Fonda from Fort Apache at the Goulding's Museum and Trading Post; West Mitten, seen from The View Hotel; Jeff's time-lapse photo setup on the balcony of our room.

The hotel projected Fort Apache, a 1948 film starring Wayne, Henry Fonda and Shirley Temple, on a wall outside for the crowd of largely European and Japanese visitors to enjoy. There are other more affordable lodging options, notably in a little town called Goulding, which has a hotel, restaurant, gift shop, market and nifty little museum that showcases the extensive film history of the area, Native American artifacts, an old trading post, and the living quarters of the couple behind the name, Harry and Mike (Leone) Goulding.

Can you see the head of an eagle that our guide? Our guide, Will Cowboy, showed us how to capture the photo by lying down under the Big Hogan arch. He claimed the hole in the ceiling (seen here as the eagle’s eye) was the opening through which Harrison Ford crawled when he encountered the snakes in Raiders of the Lost Ark. (It makes a good story, but I learned later is probably not true, though Monument Valley has been used as a location in an impressive number of films and more.)

As we moved on up the road to Moab, Utah, we realized that two days in a place this magical, wasn’t near enough, so we’re planning a return trip, perhaps when it’s cooler and the prices are lower.

Moab

The Utah hamlet of Moab has just over 5,000 residents, but attracts more than 1 million visitors yearly to gawk at the stunning scenery in Arches National Park. The park is out of the way—a four hour drive from Salt Lake City, six and a half hours from Las Vegas. When last we visited in the 1990s, our son Sam was with us and perhaps only 9 or 10 at the time. Our hearts were in our hands as he raced up the red rocks ahead of us. Jeff took a picture of him in his red Flash T-shirt under the Delicate Arch, one of the park’s most recognized arches.

Our son Sam at about 10 under the Delicate Arch. (Photo by Jefferson Graham)

There are some 2,000 arches in this park, some right off the road, but others, like the Delicate Arch, a bit of a climb. As I’m writing this, we have been here about a day, trying to beat the heat by hiking in the early morning when the temperatures are in the mid-60s, compared to later—even at 6 or 7 p.m. when they’re still in the mid-90s! Given Jeff’s determination to get a great picture of the Delicate Arch, we’ll probably attempt to reach it again, with several liters of water in our backpacks, but meanwhile, we captured a few arches and other sights worth remembering with our iPhones—and there will be more to come in future posts. And yes, I hear you asking, “But how was the food, Ruth?” I will get to that at some point. (Jeff, neither a vegan nor a vegetarian, only seems to have a taste for black bean burgers when there are so many other choices here. Go figure.)

With so many sights on our radar, eating hasn’t been as top of mind as it usually is for me, especially when everyone’s warning about taking more water than we ever think we’ll need because of the excessive heat. But of course, we do have to eat. More on that in my next post.

Skyline Arch, a panoramic view.

And one more:

Thanks for reading, subscribing, commenting and sharing this post. Look for my next “postcard” in a few hundred miles.

Stay cool!

Ruth