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Monument Valley Cruise

Click on each picture to enlarge!

Nine cars with eighteen people took part in the 2009 spring cruise. We met at City Market south and left around noon on Friday under lightly overcast skis. Our first stop was for lunch in Norwood. We followed that with a stop for fuel in Monticello, then on to Bluff arriving around five. After every one got settled in their rooms at the Recapture Inn we all got together for a steak dinner. After dinner most of the group retired to their rooms only to be woken up by every siren in three counties loudly wailing at 12:30 AM.  There was a rather significant brush fire to the west of the Recapture Inn; the Mokee Motel just to the west of the Recapture was evacuated and sustained some broken windows from the heat. Lots of commotion for several hours was caused by a couple of fellows with some beer in them under a highway bridge off to the west of the damaged motel.

Saturday we left the lodge at 7:30 AM for Monument Valley. It was foggy and overcast. I took us to the Monument headquarters to the confusion of Bob Brahler who told me the tour was arranged through Goulding's  Lodge which is the other side of the highway. When we got to Goulding's we were hooked up with a woman who had done the tours for nine years. She was a good host and did lots of explaining about the formation features and pointing out items of interest. She told us of all the movies made in the area. The perspective that is seen from the tour is much different than the one seen from the highway. I have been to Monument Valley many times traveling through but had never seen the back country. It was a very enjoyable three hour tour. The only problem was the wind, and the overcast sky didn’t make for great pictures.

All the gang went for lunch at Goulding's except Roxanne and me. The weather was clearing and the sun coming out and I wasn’t ready to quit exploring. I’ll drive my truck anyplace it’ll go without getting torn up, so I was willing to go back out in the Valley.

There is quite a bit of the area which wasn’t covered in the tour that we took in the morning that is accessible to the public if they are willing to drive on the unimproved dirt roads. The sun came out for the afternoon; we took all the roads and were rewarded with some spectacular sights. I would highly recommend that anyone driving through the area stopping for a tour or just the self guided exploring that Roxanne and I did on our own. Almost any passenger car can negotiate the roads, they are no worse than your cousin’s driveway.

Saturday evening before supper we had a show us your trunk car show. Bob Brahler and Bob Evans were the judges. They chose Tom Ingram’s Camaro to be the neatest with only a lonely uninstalled Garmin GPS unit still in the box in that empty space. I was impressed with Bob Byers’ Packard. It looked like there were enough parts to rebuild the car right there in the lot at the Recapture, but he had them all boxed and marked so he couldn’t get confused. The judges also picked the worst. They had me show them the  sleeper in my truck because they said it was my trunk, so I figured I was a shoo-in for that “award.” Roxanne and I have a special technique when traveling; just throw it over your shoulder as long as it doesn’t stink. [Note from Roxanne: “I do NOT throw stuff ‘over my shoulder’ in the truck, or any other vehicle. I want this duly noted!!! I use a garbage sack, the way most civilized people do.”]

But the judges in their infinite wisdom chose Ferris McCollum because they were appalled by the unaddressed rust in the trunk of his Oldsmobile. Also offending the judges was his sack of tools, not box of tools, sack of tools. I have been with Ferris when he has yanked out his sack of tools and I can tell you it is a pretty impressive sack, you never can tell when you are going to need a claw hammer with one claw.

We all had supper at the Twin Rocks Café and retired to catch up on the sleep missed the night before. After a fend-for-yourself breakfast we gathered at 9:30AM for the return trip home. We opted to come home through Cortez, so we left Bluff on highway 162 then caught 160 in Colorado. We lost four car loads of ‘gamblers’ at Towaoc, the rest of us stopped in Cortez at the welcome center and ate some chocolate for them and picked up our new Colorado road map. We had light snow on Lizard Head pass, but it wasn’t sticking. Part of the remaining group stopped for lunch in Ridgeway.

With the exception of the overcast sky for the tour in Monument Valley I would say the trip was enjoyed by all. Nothing broken and only minimal losses at Towaoc;  the trip was a great success.