Monument Valley is located on the Arizona & Utah state line in Navajo Indian land. The Navajo call Monument Valley Tse' Bii' Ndzisgaii which means the valley of the rocks. Each spire, mesa or butte has it's own name such as The Mexican Hat, Mittens, The Three Sisters, Totem Pole, Bird Spring and Rain God Mesa. A spire is a really tall but skinny outcrop of rock. A mesa is a tall piece of land all on its own with a flat top and steep sides like a table. A butte is similar but taller and slimmer than a mesa. The mesas and buttes are over 300m meters above the valley floor and the valley floor is 5000 to 6000 feet above sea level.
Monument Valley is very famous from being in so many movies especially Westerns. It is mind blowing and it's a whole different landscape to home. The rocks have so many amazing colours through them, which showed up even more at sunset and sunrise. We drove into Monument Valley at sunset, the rocks were glowing red and we got to watch the sun rise over the valley the next morning, it was beautiful.
The east and west mittens look like hands and they signify spirits watching over us. Rain God Mesa is in the centre of the park, Navajo Medicine Men pray and give thanks to the Rain God who stores water for the people - a natural aquifier seeps water out of the base of the sandstone. It is really hot and dry in summer at Monument Valley (around 40oC most days) and it can get to minus 16oC in winter and even snow, it is still very dry though. There was some snow ontop of the mesas while we were there but it felt nice and warm during the day.
After leaving Monument Valley we saw The Four Corners which is where the four states of Arizona, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico meet. It is the only place in America where you can stand in four states at one time. We met a Navajo Indian man who made arrows and tools out of stone, timber and hide. He showed Drew how to make an arrow head out of different stones incuding "Sony Stone" which is glass from old T.V's! Hannah
Arches National Park in Utah was an amazing place to visit. There are over 2000 natural stone arches in the park formed by water and wind grating away the soft sandstone over thousands of years. There are also balancing rocks, spires and many other interesting rock formations including "bee hives".
The main reason that we visited Arches National Park was to try and find some fossils. This incredible area represents the most continuous record of life of any geoghraphic area on the planet. Fossils and dinosaur bones protrude from the sandstone embankments and dinosaur footprints can be seen across the park. 
While we were there we had a good look around and a bit of a dig, we also cracked open some stones. You are allowed to take common non-vertabrae fossils eg shells, plants, petrified wood and trilobites as long as you are collecting them for non-commercial uses.
Mild and moist climates during the jurassic period added to the Morrison formation (upper jurasic rock formation) which contained a series of clays and sandstone that helped fossilise plants, bones, teeth and even footprints into the landscape.
We thought we found a few different things but we weren't sure if they were fossils or just rocks. After visiting the Mill Canyon site we went to a fossil museum & shop where we realised we had actually found some petrified wood and perhaps some other fossils. It would have been a good idea to visit the fossil museum first so that we would know what to look for! 
The soil in the hills around the site is really green not from plants but from the copper found in the soil that leaches through the ground. This is really interesting as I've never seen anything like this before. Fossil hunting was really fun, we all enjoyed digging around and trying to discover our own fossils. Drew
