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The Monument Valley, Utah, Arizona
Navajo Land Park
Monument Valley is a red sand desert area along the Arizona and Utah border. This valley is well known for the towering sandstone buttes, especially those in the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park which is now twenty dollars per vehicle entrance fee.
The park, frequently a filming location for Western movies, is accessed by a seventeen mile loop drive. The famous, steeply sloped Mittens buttes can be viewed from the road or from overlooks such as John Ford′s Point.
Yes, there are some amazing buttes in the Navajo park, still, driving US 191 and or US 163 will provide more than you can point your camera at.
The Mesa Top
Leaving Natural Bridges National Monument, I take SR 261 southbound, still on the top of Cedar mesa, towards where it joins US 163. In about thirty miles, I come to a sign warning me that the hard surface roadway end, is changing to a gravel road and then descends steeply over a narrow switchback roadway.
The Moki
Moki, or Mokee is from the Spanish word moqui, which was a general term used by the Spanish explorers and settlers of this region to describe the indigenous people encountered and the vanishing culture which had left behind the many ruins they discovered.
Even before the Spanish, the word was the original self designation of the Hopi people (mookwi). However, because of it′s long use by non Hopi as a discriminatory expression and of it close similarity with the Hopi word for dead (mooki), the Hopi now consider the word mookwi offensive.
Moqui continued to be used by the Anglo pioneers who moved into southern Utah during the 1800′s.
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