HOMEBOUND

We spent the last two days of our trip in touristy Sedona and very cute Jerome, eating, shopping and strolling around, mostly cameraless. A perfect, relaxing end to a great adventure! We go home and back to reality with lots of beautiful images in our heads. Here's to our melancholic farewell from Phoenix Airport and to a wonderful warm welcome of many, many Christmas cards! THANK YOU, DEAR FRIENDS AND FAMILY!

MONUMENT VALLEY

lies within the Navajo Nation reservation, and is thus ancient Navajo territory, that much we knew. What we didn't know was that the place where we stayed, Goulding's Lodge, has a quite interesting history. It was the founders of this former trading post, Harry and Leone "Mike" Goulding, who established trading business with the Navajo Indians. When business came to a halt during the depression, they camped outside of John Fort's office in Hollywood to convince him to shoot his Western movies (starring John Wayne!) in Monument Valley. The rest is (movie making) history.

Since we arrived in the dark, the balcony view from our hotel room is the first glimpse we get of Monument Valley.

And here we are, inside the national park ...


admiring the giant monuments and the incredible silence of the valley.


Sneaking a last glimpse, trying to take it all in.

PICTURE IT:

It's evening, somewhere between Colorado, Utah and Arizona, we're driving along a highway that cuts straight across the desert, Heart's "Alone" blasting on the public radio channel. On our right a totally deserted ghost town, on our left this:

MESA VERDE

The "green table", today a national park, was home to the Ancestral Puebloans between about 500 AD and 1500 AD. After living in pit houses and other shelters for centuries, they built these really impressive cliff dwellings into the canyon's alcoves around 1300 AD, some of them several stories high. We came, saw, and were very impressed. Oh, funny/sad detail: Guess who holds the biggest collection of Mesa Verde artefacts outside the US? That's right, the National Museum of Finland. "Thanks to" treasure hunter Gustaf Nordenskiöld.

ARCHES NATIONAL PARK

is home to some very impressive sandstone arches and other formations. Following the trails through snow, rain, wind and sunshine was a fun and quite exhausting adventure - good thing we had the rest of the day to relax.

MOVING ON

Driving through winter landscapes ...

through the Red Valley ...


passing snowcapped mountains ...

and giant cliffs (that made our car look and us feel really tiny) ...

we finally ended up in Moab and are looking forward to seeing some more cool sandstone formations.

IT'S A VACATION!

We had to remind ourselves of that yesterday and throw in some hours of relaxing and exercise. Perfect, because after a number of very cheap and basic motels we spent two nights in a very fancy spa hotel. Just what we needed! After a little bit of cross country skiing, swimming and hanging out in the hot tub or in front of the fire place, we felt as good as new. Again, merry Christmas everyone!

BRYCE CANYON

So far our favorite place was Bryce Canyon, where we spent Christmas. It's red sandstone formations are really much redder than these pictures can capture. It's beautiful! We spent hours looking at these views and had a hard time leaving this area. Merry Christmas, dear readers!