Side Tracks

Side Tracks

 

What Some Mounted Shooters Do for Fun When Not Shooting

Visit to The Land of John Wayne Westerns

 

Monument Valley is a place of red mesas, purple sage, and skyscraper-size buttes. It’s a real place, but it’s been the backdrop of too many movies to count. It is the place that John Ford’s “Stagecoach” made famous.   A place where Charlton Heston/Moses struggled against the Egyptians, John Wayne duked it out with the Apaches, Henry Fonda shot at the Clantons, and Forest Gump quit running. A place that Ford returned nine more times to shoot Westerns, including the Western of all time, “The Searchers”.

 

John Ford chose this locale even when the storylines were not set in Arizona or Utah. For example, “The Searchers” hunted for a missing girl in Texas, but the movie was filmed in Monument Valley. A popular lookout point is named in his honor as "John Ford Point." Ford featured it in a scene from “The Searchers” where an Indian village is attacked.

 

Eight Cowboy Mounted Shooters and their competition horses journeyed to the land of “John Wayne Westerns” last October. Wes and Bobbie Walton, Don and Susan Turner, and my husband Robert and I (along with Patrick and Dawn Morris) loaded up our rigs and traveled to the border of Arizona and Utah, near the Four Corners area. After a delay in Flagstaff with a truck breakdown, all the couples finally reunited in Monument Valley, which lies within the Navajo Nation Reservation. The Navajo name for the valley is Tsé Bii’ Ndzisgaii (Valley of the Rocks).

 

Dawn, Susan and I had visited Monument Valley two years before and wanted to share one of the most beautiful and historic places in the world with our husbands. It took two years to get a date for this new trip.  Wes and Bobbie Walton signed on along with Gary & Dee Dee Trichter, but the Trichters were not able to make it because of a last minute riding injury to Dee Dee. We were guests of the Yazzi family.  The Yazzi’s book a small number of groups in the spring and fall of each year.

 

Robert Morris looked forward to this trip saying, “I have been intrigued with Monument Valley since seeing it in the John Ford/John Wayne movies as a kid.  This was the chance of a lifetime to actually wear a Cowboy hat and ride my horse in the romantic, mythic Old West.”

 

In the Valley, you are transported back to another era. There is no cell phone reception, no water and no electricity. The air is clear and the sky at night is magnificent. The nearest services—a 1920’s trading post–are in Goulding, located eight miles away (a one hour drive over the rough terrain.) Navajos that live within the Valley must haul in all water for themselves and livestock.

 

Arriving at base camp after the long, slow and rough drive down into the Valley, we set up camp. Stalls were provided for the horses; there were also a couple of outhouses. Water was furnished for the horses but the riders hauled in our own food and drinking water plus horse rations. There is very little firewood available in the Valley and the Yazzis furnished it for evening campfire. No guns are allowed in the Navajo Nation so these Mounted Shooters were unarmed!

 

We wagon-wheeled out from base camp to take daily rides, returning each evening.  The rides are only accessible to outsiders who have Navajo guides. The rides lasted all day so we packed lunches to be enjoyed among the famous landmarks, Anasazi ruins and petroglyphs.

 

Every night was a potluck dinner.  Afterward, we gathered round the campfire where our Navajo companions played drums and sang native songs. The riders also visited the Yazzi family village, where we toured a hogan (made out of mud and juniper) and saw how wool is spun to make the beautiful rugs for which Navajos are famous. We even got to see a demonstration of rug weaving by the famous matriarch Susie Yazzi, who also treated Dawn with a native Navaho hair-dressing session.

 

The trip was cut short because of a windstorm, but that gave the riders a firsthand view of how the Monument Valley formations were created! Once the wind set in, the campfires went dark and the riders moved inside the Walton’s trailer for evening meals and socializing.

 

"Monument Valley is one of those places that takes you back in time to the point that somehow you can actually feel and visualize the people of the past moving around with you. I also received an experience of how the formation of those beautiful rock sculptures is accomplished plus a new sandblasted facial!" said Bobbie Walton. To which Wes added,  “Monumental!"

 

This may well be the ride of a lifetime and everyone felt part of an adventure—after all this is the land of "John Wayne Westerns" and we witnessed it firsthand!

Related posts:

1. Side Tracks   Beneath the Bright Red Bluffs of Palo Duro—Texas...
2. Side Tracks   Lajitas Resort & Spa - The Ultimate Cowboy Getaway...
3. Side Tracks   Dude Ranch Reprieve Taking a trip both you...
4. Side Tracks   Outlaw Trail at Hole-In-The Wall. Riding with the...
5. Side Tracks   Celebrating Bandera Texas style with horses, cowboys and...
6. Side Tracks   Ladies of Tradition   Tradition” can be defined as...
7. Battle in the Bighorn An Immersion in History   It’s a scene that’s...