The classic Wild-West landscape of stark sandstone buttes and forbidding pinnacles of rock, poking from an endless expanse of drifting red sands, has become an archetypal image. Only when you arrive at MONUMENT VALLEY - which straddles the Arizona-Utah state line, 24 miles north of Kayenta and 25 miles southwest of Mexican Hat - do you realize how much your perception of the West has in fact been shaped by this one spot. Such scenery does exist elsewhere, of course, but nowhere is it so perfectly concentrated and distilled. While movie-makers have flocked here since the early days of Hollywood - this was where John Ford made John Wayne a star - the sheer majesty of the place still takes your breath away. Add the fact that it remains a stronghold of Navajo culture, little affected by tourism, and Monument Valley can be the absolute highlight of a trip to the Southwest.

The biggest and most impressive of the monoliths are a pair called The Mittens , one East and one West, each of which has a distinct thumb splintering off from its central bulk. The taller of the two rises a thousand feet above the valley floor, with sand dunes lapping at its base. Over a dozen other spires are spread around nearby, along with rock art panels and an assortment of minor but nicely sited Ancestral Puebloan ruins .

You can see the buttes for free, towering alongside US-163, but the four-mile detour to enter Monument Valley Tribal Park is rewarded with much closer views (May-Sept daily 7am-7pm; Oct-April daily 8am-5pm; $4). A rough, unpaved road drops from behind the visitor center to run through Monument Valley itself. The 17-mile self-drive route makes a bumpy but bearable ride in an ordinary vehicle, and takes something over an hour to complete (open summer daily 8am-6pm; rest of year daily 8am-4.30pm). You're allowed to stop en route to stretch your legs, but not to hike for any distance. However, the Navajo-led jeep or horseback tours into the backcountry are very much recommended; a two-hour jeep trip costs from around $20 per person if arranged at the visitor center, slightly more if organized through Goulding's Lodge (see below). As well as stopping at such movie locations as the Totem Pole (atop which Clint Eastwood had some perilous moments in The Eiger Sanction ), these pause so you can watch weavers at work in a Navajo hogan (traditional eight-sided dwelling).

The Haskeneini (tel 928/871-4602) is a reasonable restaurant at the visitor center, not far from the very exposed Mitten View   campground (first-come, first-served; summer only; $10). The only accommodation in the immediate vicinity is six miles west, in Utah; Goulding's Lodge (tel 435/727-3231 or 1-800/874-0902, ; $100-130), is a 1920s trading post that now offers pricey motel rooms with magnificent views, a fairly good restaurant, a general store and gas station, a small movie museum and its own campground (mid-March to Oct; $14; same phone).

Monument Valley

• Monument Valley

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