Monthly Archives: May 2009

About Goulding’s Lodge

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The place to stay in Monument Valley.

I need to take a moment to talk about Goulding’s Lodge in Monument Valley, since so many of my Twitter friends commented on the photos I tweeted of the view from my room.

Goulding’s was founded by Harry and Leona (“Mike”) Goulding back in the 1920s or 30s. It was a trading post back then, where the Navajo would trade their rugs, blankets, jewelry, and other hand-made items for goods that the Gouldings stocked in their store, such as foodstuffs and items otherwise unavailable on the reservation. The trading post started as a tent and, after a while, moved into a stone building that still stands on the property, housing a museum.

First Light at Monument Valley
The view from my room at first light. I slept with my curtains open so this is the first thing I saw when I woke up on my most recent trip.

During the depression, many of the Goulding’s suppliers went out of business, making it difficult for them to get goods to trade. Harry Goulding got the idea of going to Hollywood to sell John Ford on the idea of using Monument Valley as a location for his western movies. He went out there with some photos of the place and, after some difficulty, got to show them off. Ford came east with film crews and John Wayne. The rest, as they say, is history. Many movies were filmed in Monument Valley, giving the local economy a real boost.

Goulding's Lodge
Goulding’s Lodge is built into the side of a hill overlooking the west side of Monument Valley.

Goulding’s Lodge is a pair of motel-like structures built on a hillside overlooking the western part of Monument Valley. Until recently, it was the only lodging in the valley — the Navajo have since built their own hotel inside the park. Just about every room at the lodge has a view of the valley from a private patio. There are also several houses that belong to the lodge that can accommodate larger parties — when I came to the valley with an Arizona Highways writer and video crew in October, we were lodged in a pair of homes that could have easily slept 10 people.

Gouldding's Trading Post Museum
The old trading post is now a museum.

Harry and Mike are long gone but Goulding’s remains privately owned. It’s staffed almost entirely by local Navajo workers. In addition to the lodge and trading post museum, there’s a newer “trading post” gift shop, a restaurant, and a small movie theater that shows slide shows, videos, and old John Wayne movies nightly. There’s a private landing strip across the street where pilots who stay at the lodge are welcome to land and park. Goulding’s also offers several different ground tours of Monument Valley; the passengers on my six-day Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure take a 3-1/2 hour tour while we’re there.

If you’re interested in staying at Goulding’s Lodge, reserve your room now. I book a year in advance to make sure I can get the rooms I need. I recommend two nights, if you can, so you can get into the park and enjoy both a sunrise and a sunset at your leisure. Although you can take your own vehicle into the park, you can go much deeper into the park if you go with a guide; you can arrange for one at Gouldings or inside the park.

No matter how you get there, I highly recommend a stay. You’ll never forget it.

Lake Powell to Monument Valley

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A slow start to the day, a great flight to a beautiful place.

I slept great at Page. I think it was the combination of a comfortable bed, good climate control (no need to run any heater or air conditioner), and a completely exhausted body.

I walked over to the Safeway supermarket, where there was a Starbucks, to get my morning coffee. It was a great day: clear, calm winds, blue skies, nice temperature. Or maybe it just seemed great because I’d slept so well. There’s nothing like a good night’s sleep to get you off on the right track for the day.

I had a bunch of chores to do before picking up my passengers at 10:45 at their hotel. One of them was a meeting with the Chief Pilot of a Page-based tour operator. I’m doing a custom video for them based on our Lake Powell footage and we needed to iron out details regarding the narration script and footage to be used. I also wanted to preflight the helicopter and remove the tie-downs. And pick up a book about the ill-fated San Juan Marina on Lake Powell. And do some networking around town.

I got all of this done — and more — before picking up my passengers and while they were out on their tour of Antelope Canyon. I also checked them out of their hotel, checked myself out of mine, and stowed all of our luggage in the helicopter.

Antelope Canyon
This is actually Lower Antelope Canyon. I made this photo on another trip. My passengers went to Upper Antelope Canyon, which is more accessible and looks a lot like this shot.

One of my passengers had eaten something the day before that didn’t agree with her and was feeling a bit under the weather when I picked them up. Fortunately, the symptoms had subsided by the time they went on their Antelope Canyon tour. When they returned, they were in high spirits and she was hungry for lunch. Since there was no rush getting to our next destination, I recommended a restaurant near the tour operator office and they went in for a meal. I spent the next hour doing some last-minute networking with a Hummer tour operator nearby.

By the time we got to Page Airport, it was well after 2 PM. Although winds had been forecasted out of the southwest at 20 mph, there was barely a breeze out on the ramp. We loaded up and took off uplake. We were the only aircraft out there — the radio was dead quiet.

The lake water was a mixture of glassy smooth areas punctuated with ripples caused by surface winds. Our ride, 500 to 1000 feet above the lake’s surface, was remarkably smooth. I pointed out all the buttes and bays and canyons I knew by name, then swung us past Rainbow Bridge for just about the best view you can get from the air.

From there, it was on to the Confluence of the San Juan River. We followed that arm of the lake up a bit, then turned toward No Man’s Mesa, crossed it, and descended into the valley west of Monument Valley. There are a bunch of dark red sandstone formations out there that few people ever see; an old hogan at the base of one formation provides some scale to its huge size.

N630ML Parked at Gouldings
The Goulding’s airstrip, photographed from my room at the lodge. Can you see my helicopter parked there?

We approached Monument Valley from the west and made a loop around the famous monuments on that side of the park. Then we went back for landing at Goulding’s airstrip. We spooked a herd of horses as we came in low across the runway. I set us down gently on one of the two helipads.

A van was down from the lodge before I had a chance to call. We were checked into our rooms, overlooking Monument Valley, by 4 PM local time. (The Navajo Reservation is on Daylight Savings Time; we were in Utah at that point.)

Wagon Wheel
I snapped this from the covered overlook in front of the old trading post at Goulding’s.

I took the rest of the afternoon off, shooting a few photos from the lodge property. The drawback of flying into Monument Valley is that once you get there, you’re pretty much stuck. There’s no mass transit, no rental cars, no taxis. The only way off the lodge property is to hitchhike or take a ground tour of Monument Valley Tribal Park. But there are plenty of nice views from Goulding’s Lodge, so it wasn’t difficult to get a few good shots. And everything you need is within walking distance: restaurant, shops, grocery story, gas station, laundry. So it’s not as if staying there is a hardship. It’s not.

Later that evening, I went up to the little theater on the property and saw a short video about the history of the Lodge. The night was dark and the sky was full of stars. As my fellow travelers settled down for the night, a deep silence surrounded me. In the distance, now out of sight, the ancient stone monuments loomed in the darkness.

Fraud Alert: East Coast Mobile Style

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Check your credit card bills!

Just a quick note to alert readers to a scam that’s evidently been around for a while.

In reviewing my credit card charges for the week I was gone, I found a charge for $2.56 from “#eastcoastmobilestyle.” The name was not familiar to me, so I called the phone number on the charge record, which appeared in the memo field of Quicken’s register when I downloaded my transactions: 912-289-0124. I got a recording with a female voice that sounded Asian. She said they could not provide support and that I should e-mail a support address. I left a message and kept digging, trying to find out what I’d supposedly bought from this company.

I wound up on a Web site called 800Notes where people evidently log the phone numbers of suspicious calls. There was a page dedicated to this number that mentioned East Coast Mobile. There were three pages of comments. In each case, the commenter had received a phone call from this company and a charge for $2.56, $4.56, or $6.56 had appeared on their credit card bill. I checked my new phone’s call log and did not see any calls from that number. However, I’d purchased my phone just the day before and had used the same credit card to make the purchase.

This certainly appears to be a scam. They get your credit card info and process a tiny charge. Most people would ignore a charge like that — after all, it could be for a ring tone or some other minor cellphone related service. But other people — like me, I guess — know who they buy from. I did not buy anything from this company.

I called the fraud department at my credit card company. They reversed the charge and cancelled that credit card account. I’ll get a new credit card later this week.

My advice to everyone reading this: always check your credit card bills for unknown charges. Follow up on the ones you don’t recognize — no matter how large or small they are. If this company places tiny charges like this on 100,000 cards, they can make a quarter of a million dollars in no time. They can also repeat the process for other charges — including larger ones — or sell your credit card information to scammers.

Please spread the word about this to the folks you know.

June 2, 2009 Update: In just a month, this has become one of the most popular posts on this blog. It consistently gets more than 50 hits per day. This is telling me that the fraud is extremely widespread.

Imagine that only 1% of the people who are fraudulently charged by East Coast Mobile Style find their way to this blog post. That means 5000 or more people per day are being charged. Even if the fee is the low number of $2.56, that’s well over $10,000 of fraudulent charges per day!

PLEASE spread the word about this fraud to the people you know. We need to stop credit card fraud any way we can. Always check every item on your credit card bill, no matter how small. I know it’s a pain in the butt to cancel a credit card, but if your has been compromised, that’s the only solution.

Good luck!