At the turning point

What a sad way to start a day: On our way to Monument Valley we first stopped at a scenic view point where Navajo sold their goods. The pretty standard, innocent beginning of the conversation with one of the Navajo ("Good morning, how are you? - Good, how are you?") went kinda wrong. He didn't follow "protocol" and said something like "Good, thanks for asking.", but instead said: "I'm alive, that counts. My daughter and son in law live in Texas and were hit by hurricane Harvey pretty badly. Their house is ruined, an oil refinery near their town was flooded and now they're running out of gas. I told them to leave before Harvey reached them, but they didn't listen. There's a lot of construction work necessary when the flood's gone. Hopefully, because I need a job." Wow, I didn't expect that. We then talked a bit about the horrible events in Texas, and I wished him and his family all the best and all the luck in the world. Phew. :-S

After shopping there, we proceeded to have a very early lunch at a Burger King next to the Kayenta Shadehouse Museum. The museum displays the history of the WWII Navajo Code Talkers and was highly interesting! I wish we'd had more time to explore it!

Stuffed as we were, we continued our ride to Monument Valley, where we waited for our two Jeeps to pick us up and take us on a 1-h-tour through the valley (or at least a small part of it ;-) ). Seeing all these rock formations was fantastic! You only know them from movies and pictures (or the Marlboro Man) and finally you're there yourself! It is said that these 13 square kilometers have defined what decades of moviegoers think of when they imagine the American West. Being there was very special to me. Of course, the tour was over way too soon and we were brought back to the Visitor Center - with sand and dust in our hair, mouths, noses and ears, basically everywhere. Our sunglasses and cameras where covered in sand as well, so we had to take a short break to clean them before continuing our Harley ride. :-D

The last stop before going to our hotel in Bluff was the Mexican Hat. Well, that was a bit anticlimactic... :-D If Thomas hadn't known a good photo spot and took us there, we would've driven right past it. I would've thought there'd be a viewing area, maybe with a little souvenir shop or something like that. But no, nothing at all! We stopped at the soft shoulder on highway 191 and took a few pictures from there. Within minutes we arrived and left, so yeah. It was fascinating nonetheless, I mean how can a stone stay in that position for so many years?! We didn't have time to wonder... By crossing the border we also drove into another time zone, thus setting our clocks on hour forward. We weren't exactly late to arrive at hour lovely hotel, the Desert Rose Inn & Cabins, but we didn't have much time left in the pool before having dinner at the enclosed restaurant. Still, we enjoyed a quick refreshment with an exceptional view over the nearby mountain ranges in the beautiful pool area!

Dinner was not only extremely good, but we could also sit outside (for the first time on this trip we didn't have to sit in a cold, air-conditioned room - yay!) and listen to beautiful live Anasazi flute music. This evening really felt like a vacation, with the soothing music in the warm summer air. It was perfect. The entire day was just perfect! :-)

P.S.: Birgit just told me that today in San Francisco the highest temperature ever was recorded: 41°C. And we've been freezing our butts off! So... What?! ;-)