MONUMENT VALLEY, UTAH — Forrest Gump stopped running here; Thelma and Louise did not. Half a century ago, when advertisers conjured up the Marlboro Man as the personification of the American West's folklore of freedom and rugged individualism, Monument Valley was already the perfect stage.
No traveler's wanderings across the U.S. are complete without a trip to this isolated plateau. The shimmering red-rock buttes rising from the mile-high valley floor form a skyline as unique and memorable as that of Manhattan. And just like New York, images of Monument Valley stand at the center of American iconography and culture.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Thursday, April 02, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 1 inches; 47 words Type of Material: Correction
Monument Valley hotel: A caption accompanying Sunday's Travel section article about the View Hotel in Monument Valley, Utah, said the photo showed a landscape at sunset as viewed from a balcony of the hotel. The guest rooms have balconies facing east; the photograph was taken at sunrise.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday, April 05, 2009 Home Edition Travel Part L Page 3 Features Desk 1 inches; 45 words Type of Material: Correction
Monument Valley hotel: A caption accompanying Sunday's Travel section article about Monument Valley, Utah's View Hotel said the photo showed a landscape at sunset as viewed from a balcony of the hotel. The guest rooms have balconies facing east; the photograph was taken at sunrise.
Despite their shared status among the most famous of American backdrops, there remain some differences between Manhattan's concrete canyons and Monument Valley's red silt-stone terrain.
One of the most unfortunate has been the lack of appealing accommodations in this area straddling the Utah-Arizona line, hundreds of miles from Phoenix, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City or Denver. The main options have been overpriced motels or chain hotels in towns at least 20 miles away.
Down-on-their-heels motels have their own road-trip charm, of course, but that's only if they cost $27 a night, which these do not, especially during summer. The only option closer in, Goulding's Lodge, is to Monument Valley what the Empire State Building's observation deck is to the New York skyline: a complacent tourist trap that knows exactly what it can get away with. That is particularly unfortunate, given that it was the lodge's founder who first brought John Ford's filmmaking to the valley.
Luckily, Monument Valley finally has a hotel worthy of its scenery. The View, which opened in December, is the first accommodation inside the valley and on the Navajo reservation..
Its distinctive Navajo styling, family-friendly features and handful of hip hotel elements -- combined with a view that is jaw-droppingly sublime -- make this one of the coolest new inns in America. The final coats of paint have only just been applied, but the hotel is already drawing a mix of vacationing families, college friends on road trips and solo urban escapists happy to hole up here for a few days with their yoga mats and laptops.
The hotel's exterior is not much to look at, which is as it should be amid such a landscape. The colors match the stone of the valley, and the building is invisible from even a few miles away.
