05-20-13

Yesterday’s trip to Valley Of The Gods was scenic.

To get there from Blanding we headed south on 191 through the town of Bluff. Going into the Bluff you go through a really nice canyon.

 

About 4 miles south of Bluff we turned west onto highway 163.

  

After about another 10 miles we turned onto the dirt road that goes through Valley Of The Gods. The road is graded gravel but is pretty washboardy in some places. They haven’t graded the road yet this year.

The drive through the valley is very beautiful.

This formation reminded me of a couple of old women.

We stopped for lunch at a turnout with a view.

After lunch we continued our ride through the valley.

When we got to highway 261,  we turned south.
It was still early in the day when we got to highway 163 so we turned toward Monument Valley. 
A few miles down the highway we came to Mexican Hat Rock.

There are turn outs on the left and right side of the highway. The one on the left has a dirt road that looks like it goes behind the Hat. After we stopped to take a picture of the rock

we followed the dirt road. It did go behind the rock.
As we followed this road we saw another smaller jeep road that appeared to go to the San Juan River.

We turned down this road and sure enough it ended at the river.
When we got to the river there were a couple of families with very young children. They had been drifting the river from Bluff.
They said they had been on the river for four days. Their destination was the town of Mexican Hat, just about a mile further down the river.

Patti took pictures of the group with her camera and with theirs.

They loaded the kids on a big raft with one couple. Another couple got into a drift boat and one guy got into a blowup kayak and they headed down the river.

They looked like they were having a good trip.

We saw a couple of gees in the weeds across the river.

We left the river and followed a couple of other roads around the hat but they didn’t go far.

We got back on the highway and continued our drive toward Monument Valley.

Patti took a couple of pictures as we drove along.

 

After a while we decided to turn around and head back to Bluff to have an early dinner at the Twin Rocks Restaurant.

This is one of our favorite places to eat when we are in this area. 
Patti had fish and chips and I had the beef stew with fry bread. It was good.

While we were there Patti bought a small rug for our bathroom. It was very small and looked like it might fit
the space.

We were home by about 4:30 and had a nice ride.

Today we are moving to Moab for three weeks. The first week we will be staying at the Moab Rim RV park. The second two weeks we will be at the O. K. RV park.
We were lucky to get a spot at all as next weekend is Memorial day and the beginning of the tourist season.