Monument Valley

Monument Valley is on the Utah-Arizona border, and known to film buffs as the site of some of the greatest Western movies made from the silent era through to the present day.

The fingers of rock which dot the area are the result of millions of years of wind erosion and as often as not the Valley is a windy place. A recent visit with my son confirmed two things: America is empty and the greatest landscapes are to be found in the west. For motorcyclists this is heaven, winds notwithstanding.

The Goulding’s Lodge motel has been on the Utah side of the border seemingly forever. I recall when first visiting it some 30 years ago it was a small ramshackle place still trading off the fact that mediocre actor and all around American bigot John Wayne would stay there when unnecessarily adding to his interminable oeuvre of mediocre Westerns. The place was positively littered with Wayne memorabilia. Given that the racist actor believed that only third generation or later citizens were true Americans, the place rather gave this American immigrant a bit of a chill, I confess. Wayne offered no explanation how all three of his wives came to be Hispanic. Must have been good cooks, I suppose or maybe they just did what he told them?

Mercifully, all of that has changed (the motel, not the wives; Wayne’s movies are largely forgotten, and deservedly so). Goulding’s Lodge is a nicely provisioned, modern motel, clean and well looked after, with a decent restaurant on the premises (no booze – this is Utah whose bigotry matches that of Wayne; forget the beer but have at it with the multiple wives), a grocery store, RV parking for those intent on driving their toilet around and a grocery store. Guided tours are available and the rooms’ windows face one of the greatest landscapes known to man. Stunning. And Wayne’s presence is very much low key today.

The motel is beautifully integrated into its red rock setting:

And if you want to see a truly great Western, one which defines the making of the west, there is only one and it was made by an Italian, doubtless much to Wayne’s disgust. It’s called Once Upon a Time in the West and it’s a masterpiece. Short attention span viewers should probably stick with Wayne’s forgettable oeuvre.

iPhone6 snaps