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After lunch, we boarded tour "buses" which were really off-road vehicles and headed into Monument Valley. The story of how Hollywood discovered Monument Valley starts with Harry Goulding, an audacious entrepreneur with a fifth-grade education who established a trading post in the area with his wife in 1924. During the Great Depression, Goulding and his wife, "Mike" loaded up their Model A Ford and drove to Hollywood with a suitcase full of photos of Monument Valley. Goulding turned up unannounced at the office of John Ford, a legendary Hollywood producer and was reportedly asked to leave. Goulding supposedly went out to his car, grabbed his bedroll, and laid it out in the waiting room of Ford's office, announcing that he wasn't going home until he was allowed to see Mr. Ford. The secretary called security, but the person who came to escort him out happened to be one of Ford's site coordinators, and he was enthralled by the photos of Monument Valley that Goulding had spread out on a table. Within weeks, Ford's team was in the area filming "Stagecoach," and he went on to shoot six more films in the area. John Wayne and other Hollywood luminaries were in the area so often that Goulding's Lodge became their home away from home. Wayne, Ford and Goulding gave English language names to many of the area's buttes and mesas, and hundreds of westerns have been shot in the area over the decades, not to mention scenes from a host of other movies including "Thelma and Louise," "Easy Rider," "Back to the Future III," "Windtalkers," and "Mission Impossible II" to name just a few. Nearby was also the place where Forrest Gump got tired of running, and Johnny Depp was in town to film scenes from "The Lone Ranger." We saw the formations known as Left Mitten and Right Mitten, and Merrick Butte. Years ago, the story goes, a car commercial was filmed dropping a car atop Merrick Butte. An actress was dropped soon after. It's said the wind came up and grounded the helicopters and stranded the actress, overnight. By the time they returned to film the commercial, the next day, anyone adept at lipreading could tell the actress was quite disturbed at being left on Merrick Butte. We went on to see the three sisters and other fabulous formations. We then traveled on to Moab, Utah. Enroute, we passed the very milepost where Forrest Gump stopped running! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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