Monument Valley & Election Day

We drove from Canyon de Chelly to Monument Valley. We decided to stay at the developed RV park in Goulding's Trading Post. Goulding and his wife started the trading post in 1924. Now it includes a hotel, restaurant, museum, grocery store, fast food and gas station, extra houses and an RV park, all to the west of Monument Valley. We arrived about 3:30 p.m., just enough time to do a laundry and take a shower before the place closed up at 5:00. It was Bob's birthday and I went to the grocery store to see if there was anything for desert. The baked goods all looked terrible, so we had chocolate Dove bars. Every evening Gouldings shows John Wayne films that were filmed in Monument Valley. We went over to see "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon," one of John Ford's cavalry films. John Wayne played an older Captain in the cavalry and many of the scenes were filmed in Monument Valley, many times over. The film won an Oscar for cinematography.

The next morning we got up early to take the self-guided 17 mile tour of Monument Valley. There is a rough dirt road with 11 stops along the way. Monument Valley is a Navajo National Park, not part of the NPS. They have built a new hotel overlooking Monument Valley. The museum was closed (that's the problem with coming during the shoulder season). The morning started cloudy, but it got bluer and windier as the day wore on. This is one of the famous "Mittens," which the website assured us is was not falling down.

We were followed by this female dog for several miles. You can only drive about 10 mph, so every time we stopped she was there. I finally fed her some dog biscuits and the next time we stopped we decided to give her some of Darwin's dog food. Here are the two dogs enjoying breakfast. She scarfed the bowl of food, but stopped following us.

This is the three sisters. At each viewpoint there were Navajo jewelry vendors.

By the time we were coming back, the sky was clearer and the wind was really blowing. We saw lots of open pickup trucks with people bundled up and facing the blowing dust. We were glad we had gone earlier and had taken Snoopy down before the wind really got going.

We headed off south on US 163 towards Kayenta and decided to eat lunch in a restaurant instead of opening Snoopy because it was really blowing. We stopped at the Sand's Diner for traditional Navajo food. Bob had mutton stew with fry bread and I had a Navajo taco (fry bread covered with chili beans, lettuce, tomatoes and cheese). Real filling food.

As we continued south towards Flagstaff we passed Black Mesa (on the Hopi reservation) which is being mined for coal. The mining is destroying various sacred sites and is using up the water at a vast rate since the coal is carried as a slurry to the electric generating station. In addition it really began to blow. The views were obscured by the blowing dust and there were numerous large RVs pulled off by the side of the road to wait it out. Since we have a lower profile, we continued slowly on, though it was white-knuckle driving.

When we got to Flagstaff (2,000 feet higher than Monument Valley) we stopped at an RV Park and went in search of the Democratic Party headquarters. We really wanted to watch the election returns with similarly-minded people. We both ended up spending about 2 hours calling registered Democrats to make sure they had voted. By the time we quit, 6:50 p.m. Mountain Time, the returns were coming in and Pennsylvania had already been announced for Obama. The Obama supporters were meeting in the Orpheum theater, an old vaudeville house with various bars. We walked down and joined the mob scene watching CNN on a large screen. Most of the time we couldn't hear what was being said, but every time a state was announced for Obama, particularly Ohio, there were cheers. At 10 p.m., when Obama was announced as President elect, the place erupted. We hung around to hear his acceptance speech and McCain's concession speech. The difference in the crowds at the two events (the Biltmore with its invitation only white, older, clearly wealthy crowd vs. Grant Park with a multi-colored, multi-aged crowd) and the way the candidates kissed their spouses and acknowledged their running mates was stunning. Like so many, we could hardly believe that this day had come.

The next morning we headed off to let Bob play the disc golf courses of Flagstaff, which had hosted the World disc golf contest. The first course, on the Northern Arizona University campus was closed due to construction. The second course was at 9,500' and it was cool (46 degrees in Flagstaff). The third course, in Thorpe park, was perfect. We were also in search of a NY Times (unavailable by 9:30). I let him off and headed for the fabulous Northern Arizona Museum. It had a great exhibit on the geology and dinosaurs (filled with school children) and other exhibits on the tribes, pottery, basket weaving, jewelry and katsinas. An archaeologist from the museum had also unearthed a new form of dinosaur and there was a great exhibit on that. Bob played disc golf all day.

The second night in Flagstaff went down to 14 degrees and we got worried that our pipes would freeze. With our furnace running most of the night and sleeping bags on top of our blankets we survived just fine. Darwin had been sleeping under the table where the furnace vents, but that resulted in him being alternately hot and cold and moving around and flopping down, shaking the whole trailer. We have now made his bed on one of the benches so he stays warm, but not too warm.

Canyon de Chelly Bottomland

Canyon de Chelly is only 30' deep where it exits into Chinle. Elsewhere in the canyon the walls are 1,000' tall. We only had a three hour tour scheduled, though David took us out for almost an hour and a half longer. We really want to go back to see the Canyon de los Muertos and to get deeper into this canyon.

This photo is of two columns that look like a couple, the left one a man with his lips pursed.










The walls of Canyon de Chelly (and other mesas around the southwest) are covered with what is called desert varnish. In reality, this patina is caused by manganese-fixing bacteria that live on the walls and convert the water that comes over the edges during rain into manganese. Many petroglyphs are carved into the patina because they show up better.















At the end of the tour we came to White House ruin. At several of the ruins and along the wash people had set up places where they were selling jewelry. One guy even had a satellite connection to take credit cards. Canyon de Chelly also has numerous cliff dwellings (both in the walls and at the base of the cliffs). The wash can get 3' deep and fill the canyon during strong rain storms which bring down woody debris.








Canyon de Chelly is a magical place. There are few year round inhabitants because younger people want to be where they have electricity and TV. Families do, however, spend the summers in the canyon and the school year on the mesa. We discussed the problems with the lost generation which was sent to school and prohibited from studying their language and culture and who turned to drugs and alcohol. Though alcohol is prohibited from the Navajo reservation, it can be bought off the reservation and we saw plenty of empty cans and bottles and cardboard beer cases. Now the schools teach both languages and devote a lot of time to Navajo culture.

Pictographs of Canyon de Chelly

Our guide, David Wilson, is a 45-year guide of the canyon. We were alone with him in a jeep. He had been born in a male hogan (one that looks like a yurt as opposed to a female hogan which has a rounded roof) way up the canyon. He inherited the land from both his mother and father and runs cattle in the canyon bottom and raises fruit on the mesa. He also raises sheep, goats, turkeys, and chickens. His marriage was arranged by his mother and he's still married to the same woman. They have six children and he has adopted seven more (his nieces and nephews). He has worked with archaeologists in the canyon and has helped excavate ruins. He knew Tony Hillerman. He was a fabulous guide. He stopped at numerous sites with pictographs in the canyon while the other guides (often with large groups in trucks) zipped by.

The above pictograph shows kokopeli (on his back with his flute). The story goes that he went around planting seeds (including corn) which he carried in the basket on his back and playing the flute to help them grow. That is why he is often represented as hunched over. Hand prints are like signatures.

This pictograph shows a crippled man. Note that his right leg is shorter than his left and his arms are bent like he is holding crutches.

This pictograph shows a hunt. There were others showing arrows shot at game and horsemen chasing game. There was one whole wall, called the newspaper wall, that was covered with petroglyphs.

This last picture is Hopi in origin and shows deer painted in brown and white. It was located at White Mesa.

Canyon de Chelly

We left Chaco Culture National Historic Park via the south exit on NM 57, a 21 mile dirt road which was in much worse shape than the dirt road to the north entrance. After slowly driving to Navajo 9 and finally US 191 to Chinle, the gateway to Canyon de Chelly, we reached the campground. The Navajo reservation is huge, covering portions of four states, and very sparsely populated. We had met a couple in both Monument Valley and Bloomfield, NM who had visited Canyon de Chelly who said that there was a lot of crime and that they felt watched and uncomfortable in Canyon de Chelly. Bob was a bit nervous about this. On the way Bob called to arrange a tour into the canyon bottom. We arrived at Cottonwood Campground, true to its name as can be seen in this photo. There were quite a few people there in this free campground, including a young couple who were making out furiously for several hours. There were also signs warning not to leave valuables unattended and prohibiting the possession or consumption of alcohol.


The next morning we got up and failed to realize that the clocks had changed, so we were an hour early for our tour. We decided to drive on the South Rim drive. Canyon de Chelly opens out into Chinle, so it is surprising to come on this deep canyon so close to the city. We stopped at a scenic overlook and met this young man, Antonio, who was selling his rock paintings. He offered to explain the pictographs (and obviously wanted to sell them). He told us that the word Navajo means head chopped off (reflecting what the Spaniards did) and that his grandmother considered it an insult to be called a Navajo; she prefers the word Dene. He was really engaging and though it may not be high art, it was interesting and we purchased two small paintings. He's a single dad caring for two children and was raised by his grandmother in White House Chapter (a ruin on the canyon floor). He was covered with tatoos, perhaps indicating gang membership.











We continued on along the canyon rim, looking down at the yellow cottonwoods/poplars and the fields and the red walls. Canyon de Chelly probably comes from the Spaniards inability to replicate Tsegi, the Navajo word. We returned to the hotel to meet our guide.

Chaco Culture National Historic Park

We traveled from Bloomfield, NM to Chaco Culture National Historic Park via a 16 mile corduroy dirt road. We got there early enough to get a site in the first-come, first-served primitive campground. After setting Snoopy up, we went to the Visitor Center to pay our fees and to watch the introductory movie. We decided to walk the South Mesa Trail (4.1 miles round trip) up onto South Mesa to Tsin Kletsin, one of the grand pueblos. The trail started on the canyon floor and then climbed about 450 up to the mesa top and across to Tsin Kletsin, a less preserved grand pueblo. The trail then went down South Gap and back along a road to Casa Rinconada. We wanted to catch the 4 p.m. ranger tour of Casa Rinconada, the largest (63' diameter) great kiva in Chaco Canyon. The ranger, G.B. Cornucopia (I kid you not), a 21 year employee at Chaco Culture Park and the park's resident astonomer lead the tour. He was very knowledgeable and put forth all of the theories about the great kivas. The picture above is from the south portal of Casa Rinconada toward the north T-shaped portal. Interesting things we learned included:

1. If you look from the south portal through the north portal, you look directly at New Alto on the mesa top on the other side of the canyon. In addition, the two portals mark true north within 1 degree and Polaris is visible above the portal (though it was not the North Star at the time Chaco Canyon was occupied).
2. The kiva has only one window and during the summer solstice the sun rises, shines through that window and moves down the opposite wall of the kiva until it hits one of 34 niches on the other side. This niche is one of 6 niches that are not in line with the other niches. However, there was a room outside the window which may have blocked the light.
3. In the anteroom to the north of the kiva there are two doors which face exactly east and west. On the fall and spring equinox, the sun rises over a canyon wall and shines directly through these doors.

That night we went to another ranger talk by the same guy about the night sky in Chaco Canyon. The night sky is one of the resources the NPS is protecting, though even here there is light from cities. Chaco has an observatory with a 25" telescope and various smaller telescopes. It was the last presentation for the year and was pretty cool, temperature-wise. His presentation included more examples of the astronomical studies and evidence in the buildings. These included a rock that is covered with pictographs, including one that appears to be of a supernova during a total eclipse with Venus nearby. In 1054 there was a total eclipse visible at Chaco and during a total eclipse you can see solar flares. That same rock also has a means of measuring the equinoxes. On top of Fajada Butte there are three rock slabs and a spiral petroglyph. During the solstices and equinoxes the sun shines through the rocks onto exact places on the spiral. Tsin Kletsin and Pueblo Alto, the two grand pueblos on top of the mesas are in an exact north/south axis. Afterwards he positioned the large telescope so we could see various nifty stars, galaxies and other astronomical features.

The next morning we got up early to hike the Pueblo Alto loop trail (5.4 miles round trip), wanting to avoid the mid-day sun (it had been very hot hiking the South Mesa trail). This trail is on the north side of the canyon and begins with a climb through a cleft (see Bob above) to the mesa top. On both these hikes dogs were allowed and after having Darwin on a leash for the beginning, we let him run free. The trail continued along the edge of the mesa with wonderful views down on Kin Kletso, Pueblo Bonito and another large pueblo (Kin Kletso is below).

The wind was blowing and we were totally alone, except for a Quebec playright we met who was in Santa Fe writing a new play. Along the way we passed some picked bowls (perfectly circular) and some Chacoan steps. Pueblo Alto and New Alto are two more great pueblos that are less reconstructed than the pueblos on the floor of the canyon.

New Alto was filled with pot shards that people have discovered and left there. From these two pueblos roads led off in all directions. They are visible from the air and have been excavated. Some of the roads went to other pueblos and some went to what are surmized to be sacred places. One of the interesting things about Chaco Canyon is that it wasn't a place that had everything people needed to survive. It has always been very dry. 214,000 timbers are in Chaco Culture Park now and they all had to be brought in, including very large timbers up to 2' in diameter. It is thought that not many people lived permanently in Chaco, but that many people came here for trading and other types of meetings.

The trail continued across the top of the mesa, eventually coming to some Chacoan stairs carved out of the rock face of the canyon, a ramp (very steep) up from the canyon floor, fossilized shrimp tunnels looking like iron-colored bird tracks and views over Chetro Ketl (with the second largest great kiva). It was a wonderful hike and we were basically alone, until the end when we ran into quite a few people.

Chaco Culture National Historic Park is a very interesting place. I would like to go back as there are more trails to hike and we never really looked at the large ruins on the valley floor.