Monument Valley Tour From Sedona: Drive Times, Wednesday Tours and Park Rules

The Route

Our route measurement runs 205 miles and 4 hours 34 minutes of driving time with no stops. You leave Sedona on SR-89A through Oak Creek Canyon to Flagstaff, take US-89 north, turn east on US-160 to Kayenta, then follow US-163 north to the visitor center. Call it four and a half hours and plan nothing tighter.

Fuel up in Flagstaff or Kayenta. Download your map before you leave.

The Cameron Trading Post Stop

Cameron Trading Post sits at the junction of US-89 and SR-64 near Cameron, and it is the natural halfway break on this drive. A suspension bridge crossed the Little Colorado River gorge there in 1911, and the Richardson brothers built the trading post in 1916. Today it combines a trading post and gift shop selling Navajo rugs, Hopi pottery and silverwork, a restaurant, a motel and an RV park.

The restaurant makes an easy lunch stop on the way up or the way back. The Sedona day tours stop here too, so if you take the day trip with lunch you will see it without driving.

The Clock Change

The Navajo Nation observes daylight saving time even though the rest of Arizona does not. The Nation keeps the shift so it stays aligned with Diné communities and services across the borders in Utah and New Mexico. For roughly 8 months of the year, Monument Valley runs one hour ahead of Sedona.

This matters for two groups. If you are driving yourself for a sunrise arrival, your phone may jump an hour as you cross in and out of Nation land, so set an alarm with a buffer. And if you are self-driving the loop, remember the Scenic Drive runs 8:00am to 5:00pm with last vehicle entry at 6:00pm, on the park's clock, not yours.

The 17-Mile Valley Drive

The Scenic Valley Drive runs daily from 8:00am to 5:00pm, with last vehicle entry at 6:00pm. The park's own advisory is blunt: the 17-mile Loop Drive is all natural dirt road with very rough terrain and deep sand dunes, and the park asks for a vehicle that will withstand that, saying an SUV or truck would be preferable. Motorcycles are not accepted on the loop.

The park's language stops short of banning standard rental sedans, but rental-car insurance rules sit with your rental agreement, not with the park, so read yours before you commit. Drive slowly in the sand, stay on the marked road and keep your own car out of the deep ruts others have left.

Wildcat Trail

Wildcat Trail is the park's only self-guided hike, a loop of roughly 3.9 miles around West Mitten Butte, measured as 3.2 miles by some sources. No permit or extra fee is required, but you must sign in on the register at the visitor center before you start, and the trailhead sits in the northwest corner of the visitor center parking lot, easy to miss if you drive straight to the overlook. Best conditions run March through early June and September through October.

Summer heat with almost no shade makes midday hiking rough, so go early and carry more water than you think you need.

The Guided Backcountry

Driving the Valley Drive yourself only gets you the roadside overlooks. Several backcountry areas of the park are accessible only on a guided tour with a Navajo-licensed operator, and only operators listed by Navajo Nation Parks are authorized to guide inside the restricted areas. This is exactly what the Sedona day tours buy you: both cards include a 90-minute off-road ride into the backcountry with a Native American guide, so you see the closed sections without arranging anything on arrival.

If you are driving up on your own and want the backcountry, you can book a Navajo guide at the park, and Goulding's Lodge books its own Navajo-guided backcountry tours for guests.

Alcohol Is Illegal Here

Possessing or consuming alcohol anywhere on Navajo Nation land, including Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park, is illegal under the Navajo Nation Liquor Regulations. Violations can carry fines up to $1,000 and up to 90 days in jail, and alcohol found on Navajo land can be confiscated. That means the cooler in your trunk counts, so leave anything alcoholic behind before you cross onto Nation land.

Stock up again on the way home if you need to, outside the boundary.

No Drones, and Permits for Commercial Photography

Drones are prohibited at all Navajo Tribal Park locations, including Monument Valley, with no standard exception for recreational or commercial fliers. Unauthorized use is treated as trespassing on a federal Indian reservation and can lead to confiscation and fines. The only narrow exception in the rules applies to a rodeo grounds facility and a staging area at Prospector Park, neither of which is the tribal park itself.

On cameras: casual personal photography during a visit is the normal use case and needs no permit. Commercial photography, filming, weddings and paintings inside the park require a Special Use Permit from the park's Permits office, so apply ahead if you are shooting for money or planning a ceremony. Visitors who arrive on guided tours out of Sedona do not need to arrange their own permits for casual photography, since those rules fall on the tour operators and the same drone ban applies to everyone in the park.

The Entry Fee and the National Park Pass

The park's live booking system, the actual widget you buy entry through, charges $10 per person. Older static text on the same official page still says $8 per person, so do not be surprised if you see both figures quoted around the web. The $10 live figure is the one the gate system uses.

The National Park Pass is not accepted here, because this is a tribal park, not a national park. The View Hotel's own site also cites $10 per person plus $15 per vehicle to enter the park and access the hotel, but that per-vehicle figure appears on the hotel's site, not on the park's own pricing, so treat it as the hotel's published breakdown rather than an official park rate.

The View Hotel

The View Hotel sits inside Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park itself, at the visitor center, at the overlook itself. Most rooms are built with private balconies facing the Mittens, and the top-floor StarView rooms are marketed for stargazing. Two practical things to know before you book.

The park entrance fee is separate from and not included in the room rate. And the hotel's site cites fees of $10 per person plus $15 per vehicle, a breakdown published by the hotel rather than the park, so budget for it. Wake early, walk out, and you have the classic photo with nobody in it.

Goulding's Lodge and the Film History

Goulding's Lodge sits just outside the park boundary in Utah, a few miles from the visitor center, and it is the property with the deepest history. Harry and Leone Goulding founded it in 1921, and their photographs of the valley are credited with bringing director John Ford to shoot Stagecoach there in 1939, the first of many Western films shot in Monument Valley. The resort is full service: lodge rooms, a restaurant called the Stagecoach Dining Room, a trading post and museum, a gas station and an RV park.

It also books its own Navajo-guided backcountry tours, which is convenient if you arrive self-driving and want to see the restricted areas without arranging a guide at the gate.

Kayenta as the Fallback Base

If The View and Goulding's are full or over budget, Kayenta is the fallback. It sits about 24 miles south of the visitor center on US-163, and it is the nearest town with a wider range of chain hotels, so it is a common overnight base for travelers who do not book inside the park. The tradeoff is the morning: you have a 24-mile drive to the overlook instead of a walk, so set your alarm around the hour difference, because the Navajo Nation clock runs ahead of Sedona's for most of the year.