Yesterday, on the way up here to the condo in Colorado, we stopped in at Monument Valley, where John Ford made most of the Western plots that we've now copied so much that they are cliches.

If you've seen more than three Westerns in your life, you've probably seen Monument Valley - Here are the Mittens and Merrick Butte, some of the landmarks:
                   

Yes, John Wayne and the cavalry rode through here in "Fort Apache" and "Rio Grande", and al;so "She Wore A Yellow Ribbon" (but that was the only one in color, in that series).

Monument Valley is on the Utah/Arizona border. This means that there are no Apache, and there is no Rio Grande - in addition, in those movies, they decided that Arizona should have cactus, so they actually erected large wooden Saguaro cactus (large in terms of people, but much smaller than the real cactus themselves).

John Ford was a very good director, but maybe not so good at geography.

We drove through the park and then headed northeast through Mexican Hat - if you've never been to Mexican Hat, UT, I advise you to at least drive through it. The mountain east of town looks like stirred-up Fruit-On-The-Bottom yogurt.

Now we're back in Purgatory, where the aspens are turning. I'll get pix - I will - but it's hard to get a picture to actually show what this looks like.