It was snowing when we left Jacob’s Creek campground to head to Chinle AZ on the Navajo Reservation. As we descended from the 8,000 foot campground, the snow turned to rain which became increasingly intermittent as we drove east. By the time we took the 25 mile detour from Kayenta to Monument Valley, it was mostly sunny.

It was mostly sunny, but the ground was wet, wet enough that the woman at the kiosk by the visitors center told us that the steep dirt road to the valley was not safe for anything but four-wheel-drive vehicles. I had already seen deep new ruts in Kayenta, so I was ready to believe her. We took what pictures we could around the visitors center and left.

The tribe offers four-wheel-drive tours, but they were over $100 per person for two hours. That might have been ok, but we saw a few leave the visitors center. They were crowded, and it didn’t look like we would would be able to get the pictures we wanted. We’ll go back another time.

Curses. Foiled again.

That’s sort of how things go with us. We head to one of the driest pieces of America and can’t take the pictures we want because of rain. Last winter we planned to go to Florida, and it snowed. We’re getting used to it.

Not everybody followed the kiosk lady’s advice. I watched a big pickup with a camper towing a camping trailer head down the dirt road to the valley. I wondered how he was going to get back up, but he couldn’t even get down the hill.

I watched him slowly go down the hill. It was obvious that he was having trouble controlling his rig. You could walk faster. At first, he was holding up the vehicles behind him, but soon enough he was blocking traffic both directions. He was pretty much stopped with the trailer at an odd angle and blocking all traffic when we left. I’m thinking he had a very expensive, and well deserved, tow bill.

For us, it was back on the road to Chinle.

Monument Valley

Canyon de Chelly

North Rim Grand Canyon