We have left Monument Valley and we are now in Tucson. But the last day we were in Monument Valley we took a tour back into areas of the valley we had not seen before. We had a Navajo guide and we saw arches and rock formations not on the self-guided road access. We also saw petroglyphs.
The picture on the left is a Navajo woman who was sitting in a tradition hogan demonstrating rug weaving and preparation of the wool into yarn for weaving the highly prized authentic Navajo rugs. She spoke Navajo and it was translated by our guide. The wool for the rugs is from the sheep they still raise on their land.
At the visitor's center we enjoyed watching a couple of dancers decked out in colorful ceremonial garb dancing to Navajo music.
The dancer's costumes had little metal pieces sewn into them and when they danced they create a jangle matching the beat of the music. The beautiful background of monument valley, the dancers and traditional Navajo music, all helped create a very special sunset.
This last picture is taken at a placed called John Ford Point. He was the director of the famous John Wayne westerns filmed in Monument Valley. They say he would go out to the point every morning to sit and overlook the valley and think about the day ahead and how he would shoot the scenes for the movie that day. Today there is almost always a Navajo man on a horse who goes out and sits on the point for photographs - $2.00 to take his picture.
We will be in Tucson for a week or so to visit with Scott and have some fine tuning done to our motor home. It's a little warm here, but I like Tucson. We're going to check out a photographic museum on the campus of U of A tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment