Top Takeaways - #10

We've had an amazing time in the Southwest over the past week - before we embark on a 2-day journey to the Southeast, here are our top takeaways.

At Two Mittens in Monument Valley. Get it???

1. The landscape in the Southwest is amazing and well worth seeing! We found this part of the trip to be incredibly scenic and unlike any other place we've been.

2. Towns are scattered and pretty spread out in these parts. We drove through a lot of nothingness in between all of the parks / cities we wanted to check out. We can't imagine seeing all of these awesome places without a car.

3. Staying in one place for just one night is exhausting after an extended period. It really helps to have intermittent "rest days" while on a road trip. Even though we might be sitting in a car for long periods of time, that's not actually restful!

4. Santa Fe is for an older crowd with specific interests (art and jewelry). This was one of the first places we visited that we felt could have been skipped. Go to Sedona instead!

5. Tex-mex food is delicious but requires moderation.  

6. Navajo food is delicious but requires moderation. 

7. Weather is highly variable! We often started out chilly in the morning, only to drive and find ourselves sweating by the afternoon. Nights were almost always cold - pack layers!

8. Monument Valley is definitely worth a visit. While harder to get to and definitely less well-advertised, it is one of the coolest places we've seen. Hard to imagine the landscape was created by natural forces over millions of years.

9. The exploitative feeling we felt while touring the favela in Rio was echoed in the Navajo nation. We felt torn between our appreciation of the scenery and acknowledgement that we were walking on once-sacred land that was now being "rented out" to tourists (and those who still live on it are almost all struggling with poverty).

10. Not much rain out here! It happened to rain while we were in Arizona and every person we spoke to commented on it. Guess we were lucky?

Peak: Capturing the Forest Gump shot at Monument Valley

Pit: Rainy days in Arizona

Next stop: Dallas, TX

Santa Fe

Miles: 415

Route: Monument Valley - Four Corners - Albuquerque, NM - Santa Fe, NM

Alex and I woke up early on Sunday morning  as the sun poked through our tipi in Monument Valley. As we hit the road we realized the route to Santa Fe took us right past the Four Corners. We suspected there wouldn't be much to see besides the state lines (we were right) but couldn't resist the chance to be in four states - Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico - at once.

Since we were there early we had the place pretty much to ourselves...and could take absurd photos like this one.

After about five minutes of snapping pictures we had enough of the cold wind and headed back to the car to complete the drive to Santa Fe.

At my sister's suggestion we stopped at El Pinto - apparently frequented by the Breaking Bad cast - in Albuquerque for lunch. The restaurant is massive and so are the portions!

Really hard to be healthy with so much southwestern fare around but good to take a breather every once in a while.

Alex ended up saving half of this for lunch the next day.

This was also our first introduction to sopapillas; we are still trying to decide whether we prefer them to the Navajo fry bread - both are so delicious!

After a late lunch it was just a 45-minute drive to Santa Fe. Our hotel had wifi, a gym and laundry facilities so we spent the afternoon getting organized and settled. Since we spent the past week at a different hotel each night we took the opportunity to relax a bit during our two-night stay in Santa Fe. Once we got cleaned up we headed to Blue Corn Cafe for dinner and a disappointing Sunday night NY Giants performance. The restaurant was walking distance to our hotel but we were shocked at how cold it was - the temperature gets into the 30s at night so we are really feeling the fall weather now!

We had a slow morning on Monday and headed into downtown Santa Fe during the afternoon. We had three primary observations during our excursion:

1. Hardly anyone is younger than 50 years old. Alex and I definitely brought the average age down substantially!

2. Santa Fe is small. We didn't realize that the population is only about 70,000!

3. Perusing art galleries and jewelry stores is pretty much the only thing to do here.

We checked out the town square and browsed through some of the jewelry stores before heading toward Canyon Road to look at a few art galleries.

Typical Santa Fe scenery: adobe-style buildings and bright, blue, cloudless skies.

Santa Fe's main plaza.

View of The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, near the main plaza downtown.

Sculpture outside one of the art galleries we went into. The makers of True Detective MUST have gotten inspiration here, right?

Our favorite gallery had these really unique sculptures that spun in the wind.

Unfortunately we weren't really in the market for expensive art or jewelry but it was still fun to look around.

We walked back to the car so we could drive through the Santa Fe National Forest and Hyde Memorial State Park before dinner. We climbed nearly 2,000 feet and had some excellent views of Santa Fe from the top.

Fall has definitely arrived in the Southwest.

Just after sunset.

After our drive through the hills we headed to La Boca for wine and tapas - a welcome change from the southwestern food we have been feasting on for the past week. Tomorrow we will make our way to Alamogordo, NM to check out White Sands National Monument.

Monument Valley

Miles: 125

Route: Cameron, AZ - Monument Valley, AZ

Have you heard of Monument Valley? Sarah hadn't before I insisted we go here as part of our road trip. This area has been made famous in many movies, some of which were childhood favorites of mine: Indiana Jones, Back to the Future and Forrest Gump. It was originally made famous by several John Wayne westerns and is still used in movies today (A Million Ways to Die in the West and the most recent Transformers movies both had scenes filmed in Monument Valley). Regardless of the notoriety the area receives for its place in cinematic history, the landscape is absolutely breathtaking and should be a required stop for anyone visiting the Grand Canyon!

We got an early start on Saturday so we would make it to Monument Valley in time for our afternoon tour. Interesting fact about visiting this part of the country: Arizona does not observe Daylight Savings Time, but Utah and the Navajo Nation do. So (since we woke up on Arizona time) we had to make sure we were at the Visitor Center by 12pm (AZ time) for our 1pm (Navajo time) tour. Seems unnecessarily confusing...

Anyway, the drive to Monument Valley was quick and very quiet. There is only the one major road passing this way through the Navajo Nation and, for the most part, there was just a lot of flat, desert-like land on either side. We stopped in Kayenta, the largest town we passed along our drive, for breakfast - good thing the one restaurant in town was open!

We arrived at the Visitor Center with half an hour to spare and we were immediately greeted with beautiful desert views. I thought we'd have to get further into the park to see some of these sights!

Our first views of Monument Valley. The East and West Mitten Buttes are probably the most famous rock formations in the park.

We met our Navajo guide, Harry (at least that's his English name), and boarded our truck for the three-hour tour of Monument Valley. If you have a 4x4 vehicle, you are allowed to drive some of the 17-mile loop yourself but we didn't think the Avalon was up to the task and we wanted to learn more about the region along the way. Navajo Spirit Tours worked out very well and we'd highly recommend it for anyone visiting Monument Valley!

Once we saw this modified pick-up would be our vehicle for the day, we knew we made the right choice leaving the Avalon in the parking lot!

First stop: an up close view of the Mittens.

East and West Mitten Buttes.

The view from John Ford Point. He was the director of many of John Wayne's films shot here - he spent so much time in Monument Valley that they named his campsite!

It's obvious to see why this landscape appeals to so many movie makers!

Big Indian Mesa. Can you see the Indian head? How about the eagle wing in the rock? You need to squint a little, but the Navajo have found human- or animal-like designs in most of the rock formations.

Another benefit of doing an officially guided tour is that you have access to part of the park that non-guided visitors do not. Harry took our truck even more off-road and stopped at a few arches and mesas for some more pictures.

The first arch we stopped at.

The Ear of the Wind. I can sort of see the resemblance...

Ancient drawings on the rocks.

The tall one on the left is known as the Totem Pole (even though the Navajo never used Totem Poles).

One of the most unforgettable parts of our tour happened shortly after we arrived at our first archway - a group of horses joined us in the cave-like rock formation to have a drink of water and Harry pulled out his flute (apparently he always carries it) and played a song to draw the rest of the horses in. Apparently horses like the sound of Harry's flute!

Glad we had the camera ready!

Though our tour of Monument Valley with Harry had come to an end by late afternoon, we had one more spot to check out on our sightseeing tour. This stretch of road was made famous in Forrest Gump and we decided it would be the perfect spot to watch the sunset.

Amazing view of Monument Valley as the sun set to the right.

One more a few minutes later.

We couldn't resist recreating (sort of...) the scene from Forrest Gump. At least I have the beard to match!

Accommodations around here are pretty limited and the hotels were all booked - so we decided to stay in a Tipi for the night. It was definitely a cool experience (and very appropriate for our location!) but as Sarah put it "We're roughing it almost as hard as Machu Picchu."

We got up early today to make the drive to Santa Fe, NM. It should be about six hours so hopefully the scenery stays as nice as it is here!

Our Tipi for the night.

Sunrise was just as spectacular as sunset!

Grand Canyon

Miles: 140

Route: Flagstaff, AZ - Grand Canyon National Park - Cameron, AZ

Flagstaff, home of NAU and not much else from what we saw, was a great stopover between Sedona and the Grand Canyon: we ordered a pizza, got a good night’s sleep and grabbed coffee and bagel sandwiches - our first bagels in waaaaay too long - to take with us on our way out of town.

We made it to the National Park by mid-morning and devised a plan to spend most of the day exploring the Grand Canyon. After checking out the visitor center, we realized that our first viewpoint was just a short walk away; we didn't know we'd parked so close to the edge!

Looking north across the canyon from Mather Point.

A little further down the rim trail, looking east.

Alex had never been to the Grand Canyon and I was about 12 when I last visited so we were both pretty blown away by the landscape. Similar to Yellowstone, the park is very accessible to tourists and most of the pathways are flat and paved; that said, we found that the further we got from the Visitor Center, the thinner the crowds were. We followed the South Rim Trail for a couple miles and then stopped at the Kaibab Trailhead for lunch and another breathtaking view.

Our lunch view - amazing!

We were surprised at the number of warning signs urging hikers to be smart about the trek into the canyon. While most were geared toward those attempting to go from “rim to river and back” in a day (a no-no for even the most skilled, apparently), many were just reiterating that “what goes up must go down.” I recalled this warning from my childhood visit as I definitely tried to persuade my mom to take my sister and me all the way to the bottom. Once Rachel asked if there was an escalator to take us back up to the top, it was pretty clear we wouldn’t be going any further.

After reassuring ourselves that we could make the 3 mile roundtrip hike to Cedar Ridge - about halfway to the bottom - we headed into the Canyon. The hike down was pretty easy and we stopped multiple times to take photos since the view just kept getting better!

Descending into the canyon.

Though this trail was definitely less crowded than the Visitor Center, there were still plenty of other tourists around to take our photo!

What are the chances Alex changes his Facebook photo...?

After a leisurely descent, we stopped at Cedar Ridge to rest before beginning the significantly more difficult trip back to the top.

View from Cedar Ridge.

One more.

The hike back out of the Canyon is no joke and we quickly understood how other travelers had misgauged the energy - and water - necessary to complete the full descent / ascent in one day. Reaching the top felt like a pretty sizable victory so we took a shuttle back to the Visitor Center and picked up our car for the remainder of our Grand Canyon tour.

We drove to Bright Angel Lodge and took a few more pictures before beginning the 40-minute drive to Lipan Point for the sunset.

Had the overlook to ourselves at Bright Angel Lodge.

Right before sunset at Lipan Point.

Sunset on the Grand Canyon.

Couldn't resist pulling over at Navajo Point to snap one more!

After an amazing view of the sun setting over the Canyon, we headed east to our hotel for the night, The Cameron Trading Post. Given the late hour and middle-of-nowhere location, we were pleasantly surprised with our hearty dinner at the hotel restaurant - we even sampled a local specialty: the Navajo Taco, which is just as delicious as it sounds. Tomorrow we have another early start so we can spend most of the day in Monument Valley.

Sedona

Miles: 160

Route: Scottsdale, AZ - Sedona, AZ - Flagstaff, AZ

We arrived in Sedona in the dark on Wednesday night and headed straight to Elote Cafe, a Mexican restaurant I read about on TripAdvisor (naturally) and one of the only places open at 9pm. I know we (mostly I) post a lot about our meals but this was definitely a highlight from our travels to date!

Dinner is served.

Seriously though, that Lamb Adobo was incredible! We also had Mexican corn slathered in cheese, butter and spices as well as marinated pork cheeks but honestly I was so hungry I dug in before thinking to snap a pic. Please stop here if you are ever in Sedona - or Arizona!

We woke up early this morning to give ourselves a full day exploring Sedona. Alex mapped out a solid six mile hike for us so we grabbed coffee and sandwiches then headed toward the red rocks.

The first part of our hike was a two mile trail to Devil's Bridge, the largest natural sandstone arch in the Sedona area. As we slowly ascended 400 feet up to the bridge, we were treated to awesome panoramic views of the Sedona landscape.

The day started off a bit cloudy, but they burned off by the time we got up to the bridge!

Sedona's incredible landscape.

Pausing for a photo on a vista near the bridge.

Almost there - the view from underneath the bridge.

The first part of the path was fairly easy so it was pretty crowded with other hikers, which was great for having our picture taken but not great for hiking. Once we reached the bridge, we stopped to have lunch and take it all in.

Quite an impressive sight! Every time I look at this photo I am tricked by the optical illusion that there are just bushes growing out of the sandstone, but it's really the underside of the arch!

Looking back at Devil's Bridge and Boynton Canyon.

The descent was pretty quick and since it was only about 1pm we decided to continue hiking on another nearby trail. Though Alex had mapped out a six mile hike, a few poorly marked trails and (perhaps) a wrong turn along the way ended up extending the hike to about eight miles. When we finally finished, we headed straight to Oak Creek Brewery & Grill for some rehydration - and a well-deserved celebratory beer! - and figured out where to go to watch the sunset.

Exhausted, we decided sunset hiking options were off the table so instead we drove to View 180, a restaurant at the Enchantment Resort. The view, and the big, comfy patio lounge chairs, did not disappoint!

Our table overlooked the pool at the Enchantment Resort.

As the sun set, the red rocks began to glow.

Right now we are heading to Flagstaff for the night so we can get an early start at the Grand Canyon tomorrow!