We were back at the Bryce Canyon rim at 6.30am ready to take some sunrise photos. Then it was time to check out of the motel and hit the road again, this time heading for Monument Valley in south-east Utah. We drove through the small towns of Tropic and Boulder, stopping in Torrey for lunch where we also stocked up on supplies at the Chuck Wagon General Store. The section between Boulder and Torrey took us through Dixie National Forest, high country with beautiful stands of birch, pine and spruce. We passed several hunters walking along the edge of the road with rifles slung over their shoulders. Lee Tuan remarked that hunters must have good eyesight; I replied that I certainly hoped they did. Later though, I read in the newspaper that a hunter elsewhere had been shot and killed when his companion's rifle trigger had become "snagged in a bush".After lunch in Torrey’s town park we drove on, passing by Capitol Reef National Park and through Hanksville and Fry Canyon, finally arriving in Mexican Hat just on sunset. It was a fascinating drive that took us through several very different canyon and escarpment environments, some that did not seem to belong on Earth but were more Mars or Moon-like in appearance.
Mexican Hat is just inside Utah’s southern border with Arizona and about 35 km north of Monument Valley, tomorrow’s planned destination. Monument Valley is on land owned by the Navajo Indian Nation, and was the setting for many of the western movies that were once so popular. The motel we are staying in tonight has westerns as one of its featured TV channels. Being in cowboy-lore country, I was looking forward to seeing a re-run. But all that channel delivered was snow. Other channels, however, delivered various forms of much more realistic and chilling violence, like the actual courtroom footage of the young man convicted of having his mother and brother killed in an attempt to cash in on insurance, and another program that glorified the knock-down power of the latest machine gun. A serving of John Wayne would have been more palatable.
