Monument Valley

Monument Valley is the place where multiple movies have filmed. It’s been the location for numerous older Westerns especially with John Wayne along with more recent movies like Back to the Future 3, Wild Wild West, Forrest Gump, The Lone Ranger, and Transformers: Age of Extinction. It is very cool to finally see this place in person and absolutely gorgeous.

We started with a meal at Goulding’s then a visit to their movie museum. Pretty nice view.

At the visitor center for Monument Valley, we started with the observation area.

We considered doing the 17-mile drive but the drive is rough plus you don’t see much past what you see at the observation area. The next option is a tour with a guide on a truck that takes you further into the area. We’ve heard mixed reviews that it is a bumpy ride with lots of dust. We could see the dust from the vehicles traveling the road.

Instead, we did two hiking trails that were pretty amazing. The first was Wildcat Trail.

It takes you around the West Mitten Butte.

The trail is close to the East Mitten Butte.

And more monuments.

There were several horses along the trail.

The second trail was the Lee Cly Trail. More monuments.

An interesting part of this trail was there were four cars dumped along the trail. We aren’t sure how they got them here.