Contributor: Michael Elmore
Topping a rise, I look down the other side at the long ribbon of black bitumen through the red rock. About half a kilometer on, cars are pulled off the road, and people are milling about two-lane U.S. Route 163. You’d be excused thinking there had been an accident, but I know why they are there: I’d seen the movie.
It’s where Forrest Gump tells the dozens of runners following him: “I’m pretty tired. Think I’ll go home now.” It’s now called Forrest Gump Hill.
The crowd is paying homage to the American classic Forrest Gump, which was released more than a quarter century earlier. My Trek is the only bicycle, and
people take note. We’re in Monument Valley, where anywhere is a long way from anywhere. A Spanish family of seven is discussing the new arrival. “En bicicleta?” a lady says. For a moment, they lose interest in Gump and ask about bicycling in the Southwest, which has long distances and scorching sun. All true, I tell them, the space and solitude kind of mess with your head and require a different mentality. But man, is it beautiful. And it is humbling, and that’s good for your soul.
After taking their picture, I do the same for a French couple who are driving across the country and then for a trio of mainland Chinese university students on a break from their Ivy League schools. We then watch an Italian-speaking lady take a video of her friend running up the road a la Forrest Gump. For a moment, I think the crowd will break into a rousing rendition of “We Are The World.”
Movies rule. That is a lesson I often learned cycling around the United States from mid-2020 to late 2023. Locals like to point out when and where movies were shot in their town. And in Monument Valley, like most movie sites, it’s a feel-good time, and I hang around for an hour, then pedal a few more miles to a campground. This is John Wayne country, too, where director John Ford shot a lot of movies featuring the Duke. Goulding’s Trading Post Museum includes John Wayne Cabin, which starred in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, released in 1949. And the museum has photos of many other films shot in the area, including Thelma & Louis (1991) and The Eiger Sanction (1975), where Clint Eastwood and George Kennedy climb one of the Valley’s tall rock pinnacles. On top, Kennedy asks Eastwood if he wants a beer. You haul beer up this rock you’re insane, Eastwood tells Kennedy, to which Kennedy replies, he may be insane but not stupid, then pulls a six-pack out of Eastwood’s pack who had unwittingly carried the beer up the cliff.
The Four Corners – Monument Valley region is awesome in the extreme, but water and other amenities are scarce. During two weeks in August and September cycling between Farmington, New Mexico, and the south rim of Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona, I saw as many people carrying beer up those red cliffs as I did other long-distance cyclists: None. Locals told me there had been others before me, though. And a couple of trading posts that let me camp next to their stores told me cyclists were rare, but others had slept there.
Long straight-as-an-arrow stretches of cracked bitumen are common, and 100-plus kilometers without water stops are the norm. Mind-bending views and feelings of “am I alone in the universe” are common, too, on stretches where cars are rare.
When I did meet people, they were welcoming and educated about the area. People most often started conversations by asking about my bicycle. There is a lot of history among those long distances and red rocks. Old movies, yes, but much older than that and more interesting, too. It’s unique, to say the least, and pedaling through helps you take it all in—well, take some of it in—and appreciate how stupendous the region is. And how small we are.
Catch up with Michael on his website: https://www.mickeymozart.com/