Moab & Monument Valley

We spent a total of two days in Cheyenne and made the long trip from Cheyenne to Moab Utah. It was our longest day driving except from Scottsdale to home. The drive wasn't too bad though because we went through the Rocky Mountains and it was really beautiful. In Moab we went to Arches National Park which we had seen before. The last time we were there we didn't have much time and we had to rush through it. This time we spent more time there and were able to see a lot more of the park. That night Sam and I returned to the park after dark and I took pictures of the Milky Way. They have a rule in the park that you can't do light painting to light the landscape. With pictures of the night sky you really need to light the foreground or it's just a big silhouette. We took advantage of passing car's headlights to light paint the landscape. We met up with a guy that was on a tour of all the national parks as a bucket list of his and he was taking pictures of the Milky Way as well.

From Moab we went south through Monument Valley on our way to Page, Arizona. Monument Valley was really breathtaking. We stopped at The View hotel where they had a little museum, a gift shop and restaurant. The museum talked about the Navajo Code Talker's, a group of Navajo Indians that served during WWII. They created the special code to encrypt messages so the Japanese could not intercept them. This is a topic that Sam just got done writing a report on in school, and it was very interesting. The land around the hotel and most of the area in monument valley is on the Navajo Indian reservation.