What Makes the Rocking World Go ‘Round?
May 7, 2026 — Day 44
Antelope Point Marina & RV Park, Page, AZ — Valley of the Gods BLM, Mexican Hat, UT
We googled around and found that photography is better at sunrise than sunset for Horseshoe Bend. Plus, it would be far less crowded. So we got up at 4AM. Really we did! Tea was made and we woke up enough to make the 25-30 minute ride. We needed time to do the 1/2 mile walk to the viewing area plus a bit of time to setup before sunrise at 5:25am. We were concerned about the parking lot being closed because the posted hours are sunrise to sunset. Get there at sunrise and you’re too late.
One blogger said you just pay when you leave on the honor system. So we got there with 45 minutes to spare. On arrival we found a locked gate. You can see the skyglow already. The sun still needs to rise and crest a hill to the east.
We could see the workers in the “rip off center”. We’re calling it that because the city of Page owns the parking lot even though the Bend is on Federal land. So we had to pay our $10. Soon we had a bunch of cars queued up behind us. And the gates opened 30 minutes before sunrise. Yay!
The walk was downhill and nicely paved with packed gravel. This is new, it didn’t use to be ADA compliant, it was soft sand. Trudging through that would have been awful. It was also pretty chilly.
We were first to hit the trail and last to get to the bottom, hey, we’re slow geezers. (susan here: We’re not slow. We do stop and look around.) This one intrepid photographer was the first one to pass us, he wanted his spot. That spot looks pretty sketchy to me and I don’t get it, I think we had the best spot.
Susan took this with her freaking iPhone in panorama mode.
Paul wanted a wide view, one that our camera’s couldn’t capture, the vista was, well wide. He had investigated some panorama stitching software, this one was made up of 22 images, all stitched together. Was it worth it? The photo is huge, it is 7,709 pixels by 4,343. (The original panorama was 14,000 pixels wide!) You could easily print this 2 feet across without any loss of detail, and 4′ is not unreasonable. But, it was a ton of work, he’s not sure it was worth it, especially since he isn’t planning on making large prints. You also see an orange glow in the sky on the left hand side, that is an artifact made by the sticking software.
One thing that surprised us was the gold light on the Colorado! This is a reflection from the golden wall above! Notice how two different photographers had different takes on the same scene. And no, we’re not telling but you should be able to figure it out, it isn’t easy though. And Paul like’s Susan’s version better than his!
Did we mention it was cold? Paul was so happy to find that he had gloves in the pockets of his puffer coat.
The walk out was a 1/2 mile uphill trudge. By this time you could really see the ripples in the gravel. We’re not sure if the Park Service put them there for erosion control or if nature made them from rain runoff.
We found a place open for breakfast. Both of us were surprised at how few places that serve breakfast weren’t open between 6am and 8am. It was really good food. Plus they had an old car front on the wall. How can you not like that!?
This is on the road to the campground, cows are not dumb. By now it was getting hot. That’s the nature of the high desert. You have the heat on in the morning and the AC in the afternoon.
Today is moving day. We’re headed up to the Monument Valley KOA. There is a Navajo art project that takes abandoned structures in the desert and covers them with murals. We saw many of these. It is sad to see abandoned places. Someone’s dream failed there. But at least these are pretty.
We drove around a bend and there is a police car stopped in our lane, blues flashing. We pulled over into the turnout that was there and wondered what was happening. How would me make it to Monument Valley? There is only one road in and out! Soon, the cruiser moved on and we saw the reason. There must have been a tight section of road ahead and the oversized load needed all of the road.
We pulled into the KOA, headed into the office only to find out that, uhh, we were a day early! The helpful clerk said there wasn’t anything else around. But if we didn’t mind boondocking there was BLM land a short ways up the road called the Valley of the Gods or boondocking at the nearby Goosenecks State Park. We had actually planned on visiting both of them, so why not stay a night! We choose Valley of the Gods and off we went.
Remember the scene in Foret Gump stops running? Here you go.
That’s Monument Valley in the background. And yes, this spot is a tourist destination. Couples, singles, families would stand in the middle of the highway for a photo. Both sides of the road were full of cars, they even had parking areas. And one one of our trips through we found a group laying down in the road. Idiots. (susan here: they act like they’re not standing on a highway. We’re big so you think they’d be aware of us. Nope. It’s not until you’ve practically run them over that they get surprised you’re there.)
The Mexican Hat.
We hadn’t done any reading up on the BLM land, it has an east and west entrance. East was closer so we took that. We were pleased to see an old Class A parked there, they were coming out. So we raised the suspension one notch and went in.
Yes, through a wash with water! We unhooked the Jeep just beyond this point. Paul took the Jeep and a radio to tell Susan when it was safe to proceed. We were worried about an impassable road and no place to turn around. We figured we’d leapfrog spots until we found a campsite.
Here’s Clifford going up an 11% grade. (On the way out, Paul forgot to raise the suspension and we scraped one of the leveling jacks here.)
Paul found a huge spot, Susan is about to turn into it here.
Paul was concerned that it was too big, we could get 5 neighbors by morning, and it was so close to the road, he scouted ahead more. Every site for about 3 miles was taken. He did spot this lucky guy in the distance. (He found that road the next day, it was completely impassable to Clifford, even a Subaru would have had problems on that spur.)
So we just parked and called this home for the night, the views were amazing.
The rough road did take its toll on some stuff in cupboards!
It turns out we were not in a designated camping area. That was below us and to the left in the above picture, but someone was already there. We were in the parking area for the named butte, the Seven Sailors. And they made an awesome sunset photo op.
Later on, Paul checked out the night skies. Were were in a Bortle 1 area. (That means wicked dahk.) The skies did not disappoint, so he grabbed his camera for some astrophotography.
We did get a neighbor, a car camper came in and parked as far as possible away from us. They left during sunrise. If we hadn’t had done the star photography, or watched the sun come up, we never would have know they were there.
Both of those exposures are hand held 20 second exposures at ISO 8000. This type of photography used to be hard. Paul’s camera, an OM-1 Mark 2, auto focuses on the stars and the image stabilization is good enough that you can handhold a 20 second exposure. That’s insane. Of course you have to hold reasonably still but this feels like cheating.
So he bumped the ISO to 16000, just to get more stars. He wanted to shoot the Seven Sailors. He was super surprised the next day to find out he had captured the Zodiacal Light!
The Zodiacal Light is the bright glow in the sky, it isn’t light pollution. It is space dust.
The zodiacal light (also called false dawn[2][3][4][5] when seen before sunrise) is a faint glow of diffuse sunlight scattered by interplanetary dust. Brighter around the Sun, it appears in a particularly dark night sky to extend from the Sun’s direction in a roughly triangular shape along the zodiac, and appears with less intensity and visibility along the whole ecliptic as the zodiacal band. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zodiacal_light
If you want to learn more about Zodiacal Light, you can read Dr. Brian May’s PhD thesis, A Survey Of Radial Velocities In The Zodiacal Dust Cloud. Here’s a picture of Dr. May before he got his doctorate at age 60.
As the lead guitarist for the rock band Queen, he is supremely positioned to know if “fat bottomed girls make the rocking world go ’round,” after all, he is a scientist and he wrote the song.
Daily: 152 miles.
Total: 3,335 miles
Return Driving miles/Day: 133 miles/day (5 days driving)
Return Overall miles: 663 miles
Total Driving miles/Day: 278 miles/day (12 days driving)
Total Overall miles/Day: 76 miles