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.

Mesa Verde National Park

I worked at Mesa Verde National Park the summer after my freshman year at Reed, 1970. Things have changed a lot since then. There are a lot more facilities and there are now self-guided tours of the ruins. Since it was fall, Balcony House was closed and all the ruins on the Weatherhill mesa were closed. I'm not even sure the Weatherhill Mesa area was open in 1970. We started at Spruce Tree House with a self guided tour. We hooked up with a ranger who was giving a tour to two people and asked him a lot of questions. Spruce Tree House is actually a misnomer; it should be Douglas Fir House. From Spruce Tree House we walked out the Pictograph Trail which went along below the top of the mesa. It was beautiful and looked down into the canyon.

At the end you came to this pictograph. The National Park Service had some Hopis come in 1942 and interpret portions of the wall. It includes whipping kachinas (which should really be spelled katsinas since the Hopi language doesn't have a ch) which pushed the people on their migrations, various clan symbols indicating where clans dropped off and settled elsewhere and hand prints (similar to signatures), animals, people, etc. It's very moving to stand in front of something that was made so long ago. The trail had various interest points where the plants were explained and their uses. The trail returned along the mesa top.

We returned, grabbed our lunch, and headed out for a 2 p.m. tour of Cliff House. This is the largest structure in Mesa Verde. The same ranger gave the tour. Most of the cliff dwellings were located near seeps where water that soaked through the sand stone came in contact with shale which was impermiable. Things we learned included:

1. The people were burried in the refuse piles/middens in front of the cliff dwellings indicating their return to the earth.
2. The buildings were built haphazardly by different extended family groups.
3. The reason the Anasazi left is unknown but could have been draught, exhaustion of the soil from the farming, but not warfare. There is very little indication of defensive building or of people who died from war.
4. The women married at about 12 and had 4-5 children and were usually dead by 25. The men lived to their mid-30's.
5. The corn was ground with a sandstone "mano" on a sandstone "metate" which resulted in a lot of sand in the ground corn. Most Anasazis had no teeth left and many had evidence of severe abscesses.
6. The kivas were usually covered and the ledges were not used for sitting, but for the placement of ceremonial objects.
7. About 80-90% of the structures were in original condition.
8. One of the reasons for the cliff dwellings is that as the population increased, moving the houses off the mesa tops where they farmed increased the amount of arable land.
9. Cliff House had 23 kivas, many more than what would be built by the population of the grouping, indicating that it may have been a central location for diverse family groups.

Ouray & Durango CO

We drove from the Black Canyon of the Gunnison to Ouray, CO where our guidebook said there was an RV campground that was open. We are discovering that as you get past October 15, at least in the northern climes, the campgrounds close down. When we got there it was closed. We asked in the Visitor's Center and were told the only places to camp were USFS campgrounds which were primitive. We really wanted to hear Obama's address to the nation, so decided to rent a motel room (our first of the trip). We went into a motel newly purchased (last October) by a retired mailman and his wife. They were very nice, letting us plug Snoopy in. They were also pet friendly and had half-price tickets for the natural hot springs pool. They have had a hard time of it this year as tourism has really declined due to the cost of gas. We got out the swimming suits and went to soak, listening to locals talk about the ice park where during the winter people are taught to climb long ice faces. We watched Obama on TV and listened to the MSNBC analysis, still feeling nervous about the outcome of the election.


The next morning we got into the car for a drive up the "Million Dollar Highway," so named because there is supposedly $1M worth of gold dust in each mile of the highway's base. My father used to call this the "Million Holler Dieway," for the many people who died careening off the edge which is unprotected in many places. The weather was fabulous as you can see from this photo up the valley. Ouray is at about 7,000 feet and Silverton is at close to 10,000 feet. The road is carved out of the valley.

Once we got to the top of the pass we were in the Red Mountain area, home of the Yankee King Mine, one of the richest silver mines in history. It earned enough money that its owner was able to purchase his daughter the Hope Diamond. The Red Mountains, colorfully named Red Mountain Nos. 1, 2 and 3, are filled with famous mines that extracted silver, zinc and copper, though they are all closed down now.



We continued on over another 10,000 foot pass towards Silverton, CO, the terminus of the Durango and Silverton Narrow Guage Railroad, a real favorite with my father. This was the view from one of the turn-offs just before the pass. Silverton itself exists mainly as a lunch stop for the RR. We continued down 4,000 feet to Durango where we stopped to have the oil changed and the tires rotated on Snoopy. Bob went to play disc golf, but the course was again very rough and he gave up.


In the meantime, I went to the D &SNG museum and walked around downtown Durango, finding a real French bakery with delicious rolls and a grocery store to stock up on various needed items. When the oil change and tire rotation (the most expensive yet at almost $120) was done, we continued to an RV park at the base of Mesa Verde.

Photos for Lafayette Posting

It appears that the photos did not come through on this post, so here they are again.

En route up Mt. Sanitas.

Goldie and Gail.

Cari and John Muller's house in Lyons.

More Photos of the Black Canyon

Before you get to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison you go past Blue Mesa. These pinnacles were across the reservoir.

This rock shows the pegmatite intrusions.

Walking in Oak Flats among the aspen.

This photo is an optical illusion. The pinkish striped rock is behind a narrow set of rock pillars.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison, CO

We drove from Lafayette to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park through absolutely gorgeous mountains. I had not been over Monarch Pass and through Gunnison since shortly after the accident that killed Andrew. I spent a freezing night in the Black Canyon with some Reed friends on our way home to the mid-west in 1971. This time it was bright and sunny. We got there about 4 in the afternoon and were the only people in the camp ground. We drove down to the Visitor Center to see if we could find a map and saw a bicyclist. When we talked to him, it turned out he had biked up only to discover there was no water available in the park. All the water in the park is trucked in from Montrose, 15 miles away, and since the weather is now below freezing, there is no water. We told him that we could give him a gallon of water if he came by our trailer. He showed up while we were fixing dinner and we invited him to squeeze in with us. Wayne, an Australian by way of England, is a serious long-distance biker. He started in San Francisco and biked all the way up to the Arctic Circle in Alaska and is on his way down to Argentina. The total trip will take about 2 years. While on the trip he met a sweety, a nurse-midwife from Switzerland.

The next morning we got up and walked along the Rim Trail to the Visitor Center, around the Oak Flats loop (which wasn't flat, though it went down to an oak savannah below the rim of the canyon) and back to the camp ground. We took Darwin along (illegally on the last two trails).

Black Canyon of the Gunnison is carved by the Gunnison River which drops nearly 95 feet per mile. Before the three dams were built upsteam, the scouring power of the river carved the canyon over 2 million years. It is quite narrow, in one place only a quarter mile wide. The walls are more eroded on the south side because they face north and the freezing/thawing effect is greater. The canyon is almost 2000' deep at its deepest. Though you can hear the river, it is muted.

The river wasn't fully mapped until about 1910 when two guys went through with rubber air mattresses trying to figure out where to build a tunnel to divert some of the water into the Uncompagre Valley near Montrose for irrigation purposes.

Part of the reason the canyon is so spectacular is these reddish intrusions, pegmatite, which occurred during the volcanic era about 60 million years ago. It's much harder than the volcanic material and so the walls sheer away in thin spires. We drove along the rim road, stopping at various overlooks. It is a really spectacular place and we were almost alone in it. We finally left about 2 in the afternoon, headed for Ouray, and the beginning of the Million Dollar Highway.