Leaving Moab bright and early next morning, we drove through young pine forests mostly on back roads, taking in the Natural Bridges national monument, and continued across a flat plateau, before suddenly finding ourselves on the edge of a precipice. The road descends rapidly through a series of hairpin bends so vertiginous that my companions threatened to get out and walk, leaving me to drive the car on the gravelly, sloppy surface. But our trusty Ford Fusion got us to the bottom — and there, hovering on the horizon, was our next destination: Monument Valley.
Through Mexican Hat (above) and you are into the lands of the Navajo Nation, a self governing state-sized area that we would drive through for the next few hundred miles. Monument Valley itself is a red desert with the familiar buttes of John Ford movies. We had to split to stay in separate hotels, but each has spectacular views across this famous landscape. 
Everything in the valley is run and staffed by the native American community. The hotels and rooms are comfortable and well designed, but we were warned off the food: what we saw looked uninteresting, so we ended up picnicking in our room on what we could glean from the general store. On our first evening we sat on a cliff overlooking the Mitten buttes as the shadows lengthened and the sunset polished up the sandstone until it was glowing bright and deepest red. Next morning we woke early to watch the sunrise behind the monuments. No wonder the film makers love this place.
With my knee playing up, Ian and Kathleen managed a long walk around the buttes while I took it easy on the first afternoon, and we had a leisurely drive around the (inevitable) scenic drive the next day, stopping off at many good viewpoints — although we resisted the temptation to hire a horse to be photographed in Lone Ranger style at John Wayne rock.