We booked the extended sunset tour with Monument Valley Tribal Tours. Our guide Frank, born and raised nearby, picked us up at the KOA at 4:15 and drove over to the View Lodge in the tribal park to pick up the rest of the tour group. We stopped at the front gate for Leslie and I to pay the $8 per person entrance fee to the tribal park. The tour vehicle was an old Chevy four-wheel drive pickup truck with open air covered padded bench seats in the bed. The weather was perfect for our tour. Clear blue skies with a scattering of puffy clouds, mild temperatures. There were 6 other folks, all from outside the country, that joined us. Frank drove us down into the valley, stopping at various points to point out the name of the various buttes and give some history of the area. After Fords Point, where John Ford set up his filming equipment for filming various John Wayne movies, we left the public road to head into the back country where only the native tour guides are allowed to go. David had driven the public road back in the 90s and had noticed the turn offs where only the guided tours are allowed to go, which is why we wanted to take a tour this time around. Frank took us to several arches, buttes, rock formations and Petroglyphs (by Eyelash Arch). These petroglyphs were some of the nicest we had seen. He managed to get stuck a couple of times in the deep sand but was able to get us unstuck with four-wheel drive. At Big Hogan Arch, Frank broke out his flute and played a haunting melody with the echoes from the canyon walls making it magical. Toward the end of our tour we popped back out on the public road, but it was getting late so Frank blew past several stops to get us back to the visitor center intime to catch the beautiful colors from the setting sun on the buttes, including the East and West Mittens. The timing was perfect. The Mittens were glowing orange with the light from the setting sun. By now the temperatures had dropped so the wind chill driving back to the KOA caused us to put on our jackets and hunker down for the short drive.
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| East and West Mittens |
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| North Valley |
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| Valley from Fords Point |
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| The Hand |
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| Eyelash Arch |
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| Ear of the Wind Arch |
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| The Totam Pole |
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| The Total Pole |
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| North Valley at Sunset |
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| The West and East Mittens at Sunset |
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| West Mitten |
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| Big Hogan |
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Moccasin Arch
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