To Durango via Monument Valley

Tuesday 11th September 2012, Little America Hotel, Flagstaff.
This morning all the Arizona TV news stations had stories about the 9/11 plane crashes. 6.03 am  Arizona time on September 11th 2001 the second of 2 planes crashed into the Twin Towers in New York City. Both towers were bought down within minutes of each other. The world was shaken, most people remember where they were when this dreadful thing happened. At first people thought the one plane was a genuine accident but a few minutes later as the second plane hit the other tower from a different direction the horrid truth dawned. It was a terrorist attack! Then a third plane hit the Pentagon and America was at war. Today Ground Zero held a memorial, lest we forget! Many of the survivors of that day attended and the victims family were also there to pay their respects. Families of the victims, whether first response workers or office workers in the towers or the passengers of the planes came together to mourn their loss.  I mention this here today because we do want to visit Ground Zero Memorial when we get to New York later in the trip.

We are now at Durango. It has been raining all day, so not that pleasant travelling by coach from Little America Hotel, Flagstaff  to the Doubletree Hotel, Durango. Our first stop along the way was the Cameron Indian Trading Post. Here the Navajo Indians worked the mining industry (they did not own the mine though), and sold handcrafted dolls, pottery and all sorts of wooden and jewellery items. The trading post was very big, full to the brim of delightful goodies and some tacky stuff.  (Pauline)

The native American textiles and pottery were "eye-openers", finished to a high standard and full of intriguing geometric patterns and unexpected lines which clearly had a deeper meaning than the obvious. But these were next to the usual cheap children's novelties and mass produced tourist-tat.
The Goulding Trading Post a little further on in Monument Valley was in a dramatic location overlooking the famous location of so many "western" movies, and notably a number featuring John Wayne. It even had a cabin used by his character Nathan Brittles in "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon". The views of  the rock butes which were such a prominent feature of that film, and "The Searchers" were slightly spoilt by rain. It was still spectacular though, and the burgers served in the Navajo operated cafe were pretty good too! (Alan)
We stopped at Gooseneck Canyon for 10 minutes photography. My photographs could not do justice to the scene, perhaps I could have done better with  a wide angle lens but even then  the rain made it all a bit dismal. I was only too please to leave Alan with the camera and jump into the waiting coach. Alan was drenched and had to dry off the camera too! The gooseneck in the Indian sounding name refers to the shape of the river at the bottom of the odd shaped ravine weaving round a large mountain, which draws level with where we were standing. I overheard one of our group saying he wouldn't like to chase an escaped horse down there.

Next stop we had  time for a coffee at the Twin Rocks Cafe in Bluff. Here we were able to photograph a pair of very thin looking mountains side by side each other in the distance. They looked like two large kids crayons sticking out of the vista.  There was also a much wider normal shaped mountain and a table top mountain in the distance. Finally, we got out of the coach to photograph Mexican Hat mountain. The funniest mountain top I have ever seen. The top really did look as if someone had sculptured a Mexican hat on the top. A few miles back I had noticed a cafe called the Mexican Hat; obviously named after this spectacle, sorry specular  view.
Travelling on to Durango the coach driver told us - on his last trip towards Durango (2002)  he had been held up on the road whilst the local mountains in the distance raged with fire. We could still smell the acrid smoke in the air and  we photographed the burnt mountain side.