Monument Valley

2000/4/23 (Sun)

Good morning. Everyone except Eri and Hiroto woke up at 7:00. They awoke a little later.
We went to go get breakfast at Residence Inn. Then we packed our stuff and checked out. After we checked out Hiroto said that he can't find his gameboy so we looked and looked in the car and Mom and Hiroto even went to go get a new key while they looked in the rooms we kept looking in the car. Then grandpa found it hung on the head rest and tucked in. We thanked him and now we were off schedule by 22 min.

We drove and once we came to a straight road, we switched drivers. Now, Shinji is driving toward to Monument Valley.
We drove through San Francisco mountains and stopped at a Navajo Indian's trade post. We bought a bottle of water at opposite of trade post to make Oolong tee. Drove through Tuba City, Red Lake, and Kayenta. We took lunch at Burger King in Kayenta.

There were WW-II goods related to Navajo Indians and Japanese soldiers.
Soon later at Kayenta, many interesting monuments were appeared. Now we entered in the Navajo Monument Valley.
El Captain

 A very famous strait.

After while drove in the Monument valley, we reached to the hotel tonight but drove to visitor center before checked in. At the entrance of visitor center, there was a toll-gate $3.00 per person for one day valid. We avoided to pay in total $21.00 today and will come back tomorrow to visit.

We checked in the Goulding's Lodge 2 Queens $118/room+$21.24(tax)

and swim in the pool with Shinji. Grandma took pictures of us.

The restaurant was in the hotel yard. We sat beside the window where we could see the vutes in sun sets.

From Las Vegas to here 448.2 miles.

2000/4/24 (Mon)

Hiroaki got up early to see the sun rise from the hotel room. He took some pictures and video. Others got up at 8:00 and ate snakes for breakfast in our room.

Soon after the breakfast, we went to Monument Valley entrance. Now we paid $27 to enter then many Navajo people came to our car to invite for the bus tour. We did not buy any bus tour but private car tour we took.

East mitten (right) and West Mitten (left)

East mitten

 West mitten

 At sunrise

We stopped at several view points for example; Big Elephant, John Ford's Point,

Tree Sisters,

The Hub, Big Char,
Yei-be-chi Totem pole,

Artist Point.

We liked to make the stone wall something. Kento made Smiling Moon. Dad made Pull-up Monkey.

It was rough road but nice tour and it took more than 2 hours.

Leaving from Monument Valley.

Drove to North to Mexican Hat.

We planed to take late lunch at there but there were no nice restaurant to eat,

so we drove to next city for lunch.

After lunch, Dad switched a drive to Shinji to play with kids.
174.6 miles drove today to Best Western Greenwell Inn 2xQueen $81.90/room.