Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park
Oljato
Monument Valley is vast and scenic. It is located on the border of southern Utah and northern Arizona near the four corners region and is a protected Tribal Park. It’s not a National Park. It’s not a National Monument, or a State Park. It is 92,000 acres of protected land that the Navajo designated as a Tribal Park. It is known to locals as Olijato.
You might have seen these surreal landscapes in the movies and on TV but getting up close and personal with these spectacular rock features is a once in a lifetime moment. This area is part of the Colorado Plateau. The elevation of the valley floor ranges from 5,000 to 6,000 feet so day time highs and night time lows are much cooler at this altitude than you would expect.
Monument Valley isn’t a National Park.
It’s not a National Monument.
It’s not a State Park.
It’s a 92,000 acre Tribal Park.
We happened to have the place to ourselves with very few visitors as we planned on visiting the Park early in the morning to avoid the crowds. For the middle of February we had highs during the day in the 50’s and nights in the upper 20’s. What most people don’t realize is that once you hit the Arizona border there is limited BLM land, therefore finding free camping almost impossible. We opted to spend the night right outside of the nations first international dark sky park, Bridges National Monument, in Valley of the Gods. It’s a 20 minute drive to Monument Valley and offers level, open area camping near Mexican Hat, Utah.
Valley of the gods is a miniature version of Monument Valley. It has wide, wide graded dirt roads with scenic sandstone mesas, buttes and towers. The area is operated by BLM so there are a variety of flat pull outs to fit small or large groups for camping. Be aware of flash floods and rain as this soil can easily trap the toughest 4×4 vehicle when the ground is saturated but for when we visited a car could have easily driven the roads. Fortunately we didn’t find another set of campers when we rolled in after sunset and got to experience some of the darkest skies in the west under a new moon all by ourselves.
