The Valley of the Gods
Arizona’s Monument Valley looks magnificent from a distance but pales at close quarters with its hard sell tours and tawdry concession stands, especially when compared to Southeastern Utah’s little known vermilion coloured facsimile and close neighbour, the Valley of the Gods. Not far from this natural wonder are the eccentrically named hamlets of Bluff and Mexican Hat, but enter the solitude of this valley and you will find yourself on a lonely 17-mile red dirt road with no visitor centre, no admission to pay and no park rangers to watch over you, just red earth and red rocks under an impossibly blue sky.
There’s only one place to stay in this wilderness apart from under canvas, and that is at the Valley of the Gods B&B. Completely off the grid, (Claire and Gary the owners get water delivered every week or so and a wind turbine and solar panels generate their power), it’s a cosy stone walled, wood beamed haven with a deep verandah for watching the landscape’s ever changing light and the long play of shadows on the red buttes in the far distance. It seems almost miraculous that it is here at all (the view from atop the steep red cliffs at the rear afford an especially dramatic perspective on its isolation) and we feel the privilege of sharing this magical place with a handful of kindred-spirited strangers and its knowledgeable and effortlessly charming caretakers.
We drove here from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon through sublime red rock country across the vastness of the Kaibab plateau, following the contours of the Vermilion Cliffs to the Colorado river and the tribal lands of the Navajo Nation. Stopping at the tribe’s National Monument, we walked out to the overlook across from Betatakin, where the ruins of Anasazi cliff dwellings mysteriously abandoned in the late 13th century, shelter under the overhang of a vast arch.
Dinner that first evening had been booked for us at the Cow Canyon Trading Post, which is nestled among Bluff’s wind-sculpted, sandstone hoodoos and the sheer magic of the sunset and the softness of the desert gloaming would normally have blotted out the memory of whatever we ate or drank completely, but to find Chicken Madras Curry on a menu in the wilds of Southeastern Utah was so extraordinary that we could talk about little else as we drove slowly back through the gathering gloom, past the looming black shapes of the buttes.
Chicken Madras Curry: Serves Four
1 1/2 lbs skinless boneless chicken thighs, cut into large cubes
1/2 large onion, minced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 can diced tomatoes
1/2 tsp salt
4-6 tbsp madras curry paste
Heat two tablespoons of oil in a large saucepan, add the onions and the garlic and sauté them for 2 minutes. Add the chicken and the curry paste; stir to combine. Then add the tomatoes, stir again and bring to the boil. Turn the heat down and simmer for 20 to 30 minutes, stir occasionally to prevent it from sticking and burning.
Serve with steamed rice and sautéed vegetables of your choice.
Looking for a gentle excursion the next morning, (as tomorrow we are headed all the way to Colorado), Claire suggests we make the scenic drive through the valley to the little visited Natural Bridges National Monument (Arches National Park, which has Utah’s most famous examples attracts far more visitors). Not a soul disturbs the silence of our hike down to the canyon floor’s ancient riverbed where raging waters eroded the largest of the natural bridges here over 225 million years ago. The Hopi tribe call her Sipapu, for they believe her to be the symbolic portal from which their human ancestors first emerged. It’s a beautiful notion and we trade it with our fellow explorers around the communal table at dinner this evening.
Afterwards, Claire takes our daughter for a long walk with her dogs as twilight descends over the valley. None of us wants to leave this enchanted place in the morning.
Exploring Slot Canyons
The phrase ‘gambling on the slots’ could equally apply to exploring Utah and Arizona’s other wind eroded and water sculpted phenomena, their Slot Canyons. Named for the narrowness of their width which can squeeze down to a sliver, these beautiful, fabulously shaped, sinuous passages range from the relatively benign to the downright dangerous. The harrowing book ‘127 hours’ about a seasoned canyoneer having to amputate an arm which had been trapped by a falling boulder to escape the remote Utah slot canyon where he had been stuck without phone signal for five days, is an especially dramatic cautionary tale, but even a simple rainstorm can cause flash flooding, turning these narrow sandstone passages into a raging torrent of water and debris in a matter of minutes.
So it’s no wonder that the Navajo describe Arizona’s justly famed Upper Antelope Canyon as ‘Tsé bighánílíní’ (‘the place where water runs through rocks’). Cutting our teeth here with a Navajo guide at high noon, when the sun is directly overhead and shafts of light beam vertically into its depths reaching all the way to the canyon floor, was the best possible introduction but we were left wanting more and would have to go to neighbouring Utah, which has more slot canyons than anywhere else to find it.
Zion National Park’s Narrows has a small river running through it, requires specialist equipment to negotiate and was overrun with seriously suited up canyoneers and woefully unprepared newbies alike- way too hot in every sense on the goldilocks scale but the Dry Fork area of much more remote Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument featured a quartet of dramatic slot canyons which we could string together in a day hike and some steep rock scrambling and claustrophobically narrow sections apart could negotiate without ropes, carabiners, helmets and the rest- in theory at least.
Armed with a (completely useless, as it turned out) hand drawn paper map provided by the reassuringly named Slot Canyons Inn where we were staying, we made the bone jarring 26 mile journey down a washboard dirt road, followed by a steep climb down slick rock to Dry Fork wash and the trail leading to the innocently named Spooky, Peek-a-Boo, Dry Creek and Brimstone Gulch in 100 degree temperatures, under a brutally sunny cloudless sky. Having climbed the steep entrance into Peek-a-Boo and squeezed through nine inch gaps in Spooky, we were running low on water and with black storm clouds massing in the near distance it was definitely time to make our escape.
Every step back up the slick rock to our 4x4 was torture, as we got more and more dehydrated, but we made it to the top and to safety just as the rain started to fall.
Chilling out later on the verandah over beers and some freshly made pizzas at Escalante Outfitters, an amazing local establishment- part restaurant, part internet café, part camping store, part hotel and part expedition organizer, we reflected on yet another generous portion of dumb luck and the need to prepare a little better for any future gambles on the slots.
Home-made Pizza dough
It probably goes without saying but a pizza stone is as critical to a successful outcome as the pizza dough you use. Store bought works fine, but I prefer to make my own.
1/2 oz compressed fresh yeast or 1 pkt of active dry yeast
2 cups A P flour or Gluten free flour
1 cup lukewarm water
Pinch of salt
1 tbsp olive oil
Dissolve the yeast in the water; make a mound of flour on a work surface. Make a well in the middle of the flour; pour in the yeast mixture, olive oil and the salt. With a folk, slowly work the flour from the inside wall of the well into the liquid. When the mixture comes together and resembles a dough, work in the rest of the flour with a kneading motion, kneading until it is smooth and it doesn’t stick to your hands. Place in an oiled bowl, cover with a tea towel and let it rise until it is doubled in size (about 1 hour in a warm place). When the dough is ready, cut in half and roll into balls.
Resting up the next day we ask the owner of our inn to show us the petroglyphs and rock paintings made by Escalante’s earliest hunter gatherer inhabitants in nearby Fremont Canyon. They are a peaceful and poignant reminder after yesterday’s dramas that these rocks were dwelling places and canvases for human expression, long before they became adventure trophies.
Great photos from a place I've never seen. In some ways it seems, not just a different country from my part of the USA, but a different WORLD!
Kind of you to say, Tessa. Honestly the places we visited are so beautiful and unspoiled that it's hard to take a bad one.