In which Sid and Doris drive the gleaming giant through Monument Valley, spurn Cortez and press on to Durango.
Driving through the aftermath of the Rockies’ flash floods had left the Giant very mucky so we look out a DIY car wash. (The ‘whirly wet brush in a hut’ system would mangle the non-retracting ariel and fill the car with water.) With Doris at the controls and Sid on the foaming brush JGG is soon tidy enough to leather off. And what joy, Marathon have zero ethanol fuel stocked for the outboards used on the lake.
This is a going to be a big scenery day, starting at Horse Shoe Bend. This is a meander sliced into the soft rock by the Colorado River where we walk down to the viewpoint with its 1,000′ drop to the water, where three kayaks give scale, [you can click on the picture to see a larger version – D.] and the restrooms give the first hint that this area is accustomed to having foreign tourists. Even more foreign than the car park would suggest, as we see plates from Alaska to Florida.
All self-drive USA brochures have one picture of the road through nothing with not another vehicle in view. We are going to include them because there is a lot of it about. It was for these hours that we wanted the radio to hear some of the local culture while the nothing flashes past. We do not have a working radio. It is original and looks good but it does not pass the hours like a phone-in or Country music.
The terrain is still rolling. Now we get steer it is not too hard to get up to real 70mph and charge the straight hills. We have Kayenta in view for lunch. This is a place to leave and we see someone is taking their house with them.
Lunch at a tiny Mexican/Indian cafe is a Navajo taco. We order one between two and the waitress says How did you know? We each eat half of what we are brought. We leave the cafe past a diabetes clinic.
Soon we are seeing the Monuments in the Valley, now in the Navajo Tribal Park. This is in Utah, named for the Ute Indians where Ute means high. The road is not jammed with gawking tourists though there is much to gawk.
The road is officially called the ” Monument Valley Navajo Code Talker Highway”, a fascinating WW2 story which we offer here if our reader has a spare couple of minutes (who would have thought that Sid and Doris would discover clickbait?).
We stop at Bluff Fort which has been rebuilt to show how in 1878 the mainly Mormon pioneers came from Escalante leaving the farms they had spent years to establish, answering the call of their leaders for sacrifice to spread the word and culture. About 70 families set out on a wagon trip they had estimated at 125 miles over six weeks down a route known as the ‘Escalante Short Cut’. Eventually the trek took six months and 260 miles. The trail they had been advised to take was impassable without much digging, drilling and blasting by Welsh ex-miners to make a ramp to drop the wagons 1,200′ down the cliffs. [More detail on their web site in the link above – D.]
By 1880 the party had had enough of pioneerin’ and settled at a place they called Bluff. They built their houses in the shape of a fort, a church and a store. By 1883 they were able to dismantle the fort and start to build stone houses. In the end there was not enough water from the San Juan River – or rather, there was too much and it proved impossible to tame the river for irrigation – and families moved on to Monticello and Blanding. There’s not much there now. Remember what we saw at the San Luis reservoir?
The museum is charming and run by volunteers in costume. Our stop is not as long as the place deserves but we do leave with some excellent fund-raising quilting.
Driving on, the land is greener and we start to pass nodding donkey pumps. Some seem to be for oil and maybe some for water.
The day is enlivened with a posse of cheery Hog dudes coming by, respectful of old iron.
Our target for the night is Cortez, though we’ve nothing booked. Cortez is a strip town in Colorado. We can see nothing to recommend stopping here though some of the aged hotel signs have a certain 1959 vibe.
We have options, unlike the 1959 U2 spy plane pilot with flamed out engine who glided into the municipal airport one night. The lit airport was not on his map but he came in on visual. Do you think U2s glide really well? Sid would like to hear the tower recording. We cross the 37th parallel which is linked to UFO activity by people who see some pattern. They probably hadn’t had a U2 at Cortez.
So we press on another hour through softening countryside 
to Durango. This was built as a railway town in in 1880 to service the San Juan mining district and has a down town with Victorian buildings and railway depot. The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railway started to pull up their network in the ’60s, but the Silverton Branch was still working in 1981 when enthusiasts saved it for the nation, the town, tourists and whiskery old dudes in oily bib and braces.
The conveyance of the day is this narrow gauge Baldwin 2-8-2 K36 and while the two horse power stage coach must runner up they do not put out 36,000 lb ft of torque.
The JJG is at home with Harleys.
Ken and Sue’s may not sound like the name over the door of the finest dining. It is very good cooking and would be absolutely normal in almost any French town. Doris says not to mention the martinis so I won’t mention the martinis.
And Sid and Doris are 50 miles away from Cortez and 300 from Page. Quite a big day.