You’re Bluffing, Right?

Breakfast at the Stone Lizard Lodge, where I stayed, is pretty sweet.

After a delightful breakfast at the Stone Lizard Lodge – highly recommended – I head south on US Highway 191.

In 25 miles, I pass through the tiny town of Bluff, population 90. It’s nestled between sandstone bluffs and the San Juan River. Bluff sits on the Trail of the Ancients Scenic Byway.

The town was settled in 1880 by Mormon pioneers seeking to establish a mission in the Four Corners area (Utah / Colorado / Arizona / New Mexico). Bluff claims to have been established in 650 A.D., and incorporated as a town in 2018. 

Unlike Blanding, where I dined last night, Bluff is not a dry town. You can get a glass of wine, or tasty craft beer with your meal.

But it’s 9:30 in the morning. I’ll power on toward today’s destination: Kanab, Utah.

Twenty-five miles southwest of Bluff is Mexican Hat, named for a curiously sombrero-shaped rock outcropping on the northeast edge of town. The Mexican hat is a flattened pancake disk atop a 300-foot-high talus cone. Mexican Hat is frequently noted on lists of unusual place names.

The “Hat” in Mexican Hat.

Mexican Hat, with a population of less than 100, is more of a tiny village than a town. It has a gas station.

***

I soon cross into Arizona, and enter Oljato-Monument Valley. It’s the home to a cluster of sandstone buttes. The largest reaches 1,000 feet above the valley floor.

Monument Valley. Desolate, but beautiful.

Monument Valley is considered a sacred area that lies within the Navajo Nation Reservation. The valley has been featured in a number of Hollywood films, including John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939) and Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (1967) – the first Spaghetti Western to be filmed outside Europe.

I’m squarely in the middle of the Navajo Nation, a 27,000-square mile Native American territory, mostly in northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico. It’s the largest land area retained by a Native American tribe in the US. By area, the Navajo Nation is larger than 10 states.

The monuments are behind me.

The desolate desert landscape in the Navajo Nation stretches as far as the eye can see.

Monument Valley, a sacred area.

***

Soon, I arrive in Kayenta, the gateway to Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. Kayenta Township is the only municipal-style government on the Navajo Nation.

In Kayenta, I turn southwest on US Highway160, then join Arizona Highway 98, and point toward Page, Arizona – 64 miles away.

Page sits near the Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell, both huge tourist draws.

The Glen Canyon Dam. That’s the Colorado River above the dam.

Page was founded in 1957 as a housing community for workers and their families during construction of the nearby Glen Canyon Dam. The city was originally called Government Camp, but was later named for John Page, commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation from 1936 to 1943.

And that’s the Colorado River downstream of the dam. If you followed the Colorado another 100 miles, you’d end up in the Grand Canyon.

Page is considered the gateway to the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area and Lake Powell, which together attract more than three million visitors each year.

Lake Powell is a summer paradise.

***

Leaving Page, I cross the Colorado River on US Highway 89, just south of the Glen Canyon Dam. Seventy-six miles later, after crossing back into Utah, I arrive in Kanab, tonight’s destination. The town calls itself “Magically Unspoiled.”

Kanab is surrounded by towering sandstone cliffs and vistas of sagebrush. The town was founded in 1870 when ten Mormon families moved into the area. Kanab is named for a Paiute word meaning “place of the willows.”

Locals refer to Kanab as “Little Hollywood,” because of its history as a filming location for movies and television shows, most of them westerns. Films shot there include Stagecoach, El Dorado and Planet of the Apes. TV shows include The Lone Ranger, Death Valley Days and Gunsmoke. 

You can go to the Little Hollywood museum, and check out Kanab’s Wild West film history through old movie sets and memorabilia. It’s free, a few hundred feet from the hotel, and right next to the Rocking V Cafe, where dinner awaits.

The evening has promise.

Mac ’n cheese and Diet Pepsi. The Rocking V rocks my dinner.

***

To view today’s route in Google Maps, click here.

My number today: 17,544,500 (number of acres in the Navajo Nation)

What’s your number?