It’s hard to emphasize just how ill prepared Lian and I were for our trip to Monument Valley. We put this ineptitude down to a number of factors:
1) Being Tucson folk, we haven’t yet seen any snow, let alone winter
2) We’re a little daft
We knew it would be cold, but we thought with enough blankets and Lian’s families trusty North Face down sleeping bags (one’s actually Chris size!!!) we could camp. We were crazy.
We arrived on reservation land in the dark.. As we climbed, we could tell there was snow around, but we couldn’t see much. By this point, we’d both stuck our hands out of the car window for the briefest of seconds and agreed we should stop at a motel if we see one.
I did stop at a motel, but not on the nice salted ice-free asphalt entrance, for some strange reason I opted for the snow clad, snowdrift entrance…. Which in my defense I didn’t notice much difference between the two initially. The front wheels sank immediately into what was now obviously a snowdrift, sloping down to the carpark. Fully committed in our front wheel drive car, I went as far as I could, and pushed Lian out the rest of the way. Which was about three foot. Before a nice young Native American lad came to our rescue.
We slept in the motel that night with the heater on permanently… When we woke at dawn to go to Monument Valley, within a few moments of being out of the car my fingers were numb and painful, Lian was a little more than uncomfortable (she was wearing the worlds thinnest socks and tiny shoes)… We would have died had we camped the previous night.
Joining us on the hill overlooking Monument Valley were a gaggle of foreign (perhaps Japanese) tourists. With an enviable array of camera equipment.
The wind chill took 20-30 degrees off the temperature, and my guess is it’s around 0 (Fahrenheit).
Never the less! The place is WONDERFUL, and the sun, hiding behind a few clouds, makes a tantalizingly slow appearance!
After nearly freezing to death, we drive north.
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