Lee’s Ferry and Monument Valley - Manni

After Grand Canyon National Park, we decided to go east and cross the Colorado River at Lee’s Ferry, the oldest and only bridge crossing the Grand Canyon! It was already dark when we headed towards the bridge. We found a close rest area in one of our AAA maps…

Did we tell the AAA story, yet? I don’t think so. “Triple A” is the American equivalent to German ADAC. It’s an auto club that provides road side assistance and also has some other services within their offices across the country. Heather’s mom wanted us to go there, because they apparently offer free maps and tour books of every American state to their members. Heather was very hesitant to do so, as she normally doesn’t rate her mom’s advice as very helpful. But one day, back in Visalia, we were shopping to get, I believe, curtains for our car. It was more or less a coincidence that the local AAA office was right next to us, so we decided to go in. After 15minutes we left the office with 2 big bags filled with approximately 15 tour books, 15 camping guides and 20 state maps!!
It wasn’t until we browsed through some of the books, back home, when I realized: “those books are 20 bucks each for non-members!!” – “We robbed them!!” – That sentence has since been a running gag!

Anyways, back to the topic: As each of those AAA maps display a whole state, the precision is sometimes poor, especially with the rest areas. So, it was night and we were searching for the rest area, didn’t really find it and decided to turn out at a visitor’s center at the edge of a small little city, which was, what we thought, not very far away from Lee’s ferry. Our car was the only one in the parking lot, so we decided to stay for the night. Our plan was to wake up early and head to the bridge to make it there before sunrise. Now here is the funny part: Not only were we actually staying in the rest area we were searching for, also was Lee’s Ferry directly connected to the center, and therefore only about 50feet away from our car.
Why is it Lee’s Ferry, isn’t it a bridge? It used to be a ferry and the only spot where you could cross the Grand Canyon. Later, in 1929 a bridge was built at this point. Today there are two bridges right next to each other: the older one is pedestrians only and there is also a new one, of the same style, built in 1995, which is part of the highway.

We continued to Page, the only bigger City in the area. On the way, we stopped at “horse shoe bend”. At this point, the Colorado River is bending, just like a horse shoe. It was a 15minute hike to the view point. As we woke up early for the sunrise, and didn’t have any breakfast yet, I was a bit grumpy. (Heather would probably not agree with “a bit”), so we took our pictures and headed towards page to get some breakfast.

Our next major stop was Monument Valley Navajo Park, an area with big sandstone formations. It was location for several Western movies such as “Stagecoach”, John Wayne’s breakthrough role. We did a self-guided 17miles tour by car. I can see why Hollywood chose this location repeatedly for their movies. It’s impressive, unique and peaceful, even though highly frequented by tourists. We also visited the little museum and shop that they have, and learned more about native Navajo Indians. In World War II, Navajo was used as a code. Navajo is a very complex language that only a hand full of people outside the Navajo tribe spoke. It was also not a written language at that time and was therefore never decoded by the Japanese. Today most native Navajo Indians are poor. Most properties we saw on our way were ragged and most of them in the middle of nowhere. Many Navajo women make handcrafted traditional jewelries and sell them at touristic sites such as Monument Valley. Nevertheless, we enjoyed our stay and the breathtaking views onto this wonderful piece of nature that the Navajo preserve.