Monument Valley

Monument Valley is not a national park or even a national monument, but is a park occupied and run by the Navajo tribe. It is the scene of many John Wayne movies, having that iconic "wild west" image of large buttes and mesas jutting up out of seemingly endless desert country. We took a guided tour with a Navajo guide so that we could access areas not open to the public. This yielded more photo opportunities and gave us a bit of a historical overview of the area. On the first morning after our arrival, we were greeted by a big snowstorm that dumped about three inches of snow by noon and dropped the visibility to near zero. Fortunately, our scheduled tour was in the afternoon, and the storm passed just in time for us to get the opportunity to photograph Monument Valley with snow. It was a delightful experience! (By the following morning when we left, the snow had almost completely melted.)