Cruising through the Valley of Gods, Utah…

There was one place we visited twice while in Bluff Utah. That was the Valley of Gods. The Valley of Gods is a scenic drive on a 17 mile unpaved road where  many of nature’s wonderful carvings of sandstone sculptures can be seen.

 

The road is mostly a graded gravel surface fine for most cars when the road is dry.  There are plenty of stretches containing wash boarded road and there are a few rough spots mostly near low washes. We chose to do it twice so we could see it from both directions.

This scenic drive is maintained by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Although it is maintained by the BLM it was mother nature’s forces of wind, water and ice over millions of years that carved these magnificent formations out of the Cedar Mesa sandstone dating all the way back to the Permian period.

This is said to be like a miniature version of the famed Monument Valley which we will be visiting next after moving on down the road from Bluff.  We felt this was another geological masterpiece with much less people visiting it.

There are so many interesting rock sculptures along the drive and many have been named by the locals. Names such as Seven Sailors, Rooster Butte, Setting Hen Butte, and Battleship Rock are some of the monikers given to these beauties. We saw some resemblance to those names but found many others as well that we named on our own.

One day we continued on back of the Moki Dugaway and headed north so we could drive the Butler Wash dirt road along the Comb Ridge. This is a long stretch of dirt road but is known for the many Anasazi ruins that can be seen along Comb Ridge. While we didn’t spot all the ruins, we did spot a few interesting ruins and enjoyed our drive on Butler Wash.

Our stay in Bluff has ended and we will move a bit further west to Monument Valley for a night…

NOTE: We are now in Fredonia AZ for a week to rest after all that fast moving we were doing due to so many parks being full this time of year…