6/4/08 Our Trip to Canyon de Chelly

Beyond the Painted Desert, the northeast corner of Arizona is pretty much barren with wide valleys that aren't particularly scenic or pretty.

Most of the northeast is Navajo land, including the town we are in, Chinle. (pronounced chin-lee)

This comparatively little known canyon is not as spectacular as others in Arizona or Utah but it does have sheer walls rising up to 1000 feet with many scenic overlooks, many well-preserved Anasazi ruins and a look into the present day life of the Navajo Indians.

We woke this morning ready to face a new day. After a good night's sleep we were both in a better mood and ready to go sightseeing. We took our first showers as boondockers and I have to admit I'm not good at conserving water. I'm not a great fan of getting wet, shutting the water off, making use of soap and shampoo and then turning the water on to rinse. They call them Navy showers don't they? Well, I'm National Guard through and through and I want the water running the whole time. Oh this is going to take some getting used to.

Our destination today is just a few miles away, the Canyon de Chelly. (pronounced Can'yun duh shay)

Now I'm going to warn you right up front, there are a lot of pictures!

We decided to do the South Rim today, a sixteen mile drive with lots of overlooks to view the canyon.

Our first stop.....

Wow, what a view!

We noticed right away that there was a Navajo lady that was selling handmade wares from her car trunk.

We moved on to the next overlook and found even more Navajo's that had set up shop.

This lady's "studio" is in the back of her truck.

A close up of what she is doing.

She had a display of the pots she has already made spread out on the ground on a white sheet. The better to show the colors I would imagine.

It was here we met Darlene Sam, a soft spoken Navajo lady that took the time to explain the symbols on the pottery. Each squiggly line has a meaning and yet other symbols we could figure out for ourselves.

We bought this vessel she is holding as a souvenir of our time here on the Navajo Nation.

She also gave us a piece of paper that explains all the symbols in case we forget. Included on the paper was a paragraph or two explaining the culture, if you will, of the Navajo's. It reads as follows:

Our Navajo Culture makes us who we are, and creates the identities that give us meaning and purpose in our lives. Our grandparents teach us about hope. They also give us the strength to have faith when we are faced with troubles that make our lives difficult. Our culture shows us how to love and care through respect for others, our surroundings and ourselves.

Our culture was not created by us but by the holy ones who lived their lives before us. Our grandparents hold traditional culture for others. They gave us life and entrust us with their beliefs and traditions, so that their teachings will continue through us and so that our lives will have a path to follow.

The teachings are sacred and their purity is maintained through a balance of energies. Canyon de Chelly is a beautiful place and is surrounded by four sacred mountains. Within these sacred mountains is the home of our people.

Our view of the canyon at this overlook.

Today this canyon is much as it was when the first settlers appeared - prehistoric Indians called Anasazi - a Navajo word meaning Ancient Ones. Perhaps they were named that because the Navajo found only their villages, vacant and crumbling.

In the picture below you can see a large crack in the rock in the (just left of) center of the picture. It is only a matter of time, and water, that this rock will fall away.

There is a small section of the canyon that visitors can walk down to. The rest of canyon one must be accompanied by a Navajo guide as these are sacred grounds. Here are some hikers that walked the trail to the bottom of the canyon.

Here's today's entry for the dead tree picture. Like this one LaVon?

Remnants of the ancient dwellings of the Anasazi. It is thought that these dwellings were built in 1160 A.D.. Isn't it amazing that they are still standing?

Navajo families still live in the canyon today. Here is a picture of a "hogan". This is a structure that most Navajo's have today on their properties. Even in the town each home has a hogan, pronounced ho-gone. This is a building used for ceremonies. We were told that when a Navajo boy turns 13 he goes into the hogan with his elders for "vision" of what he is supposed to do with his life. It is an six sided room with doorway facing east to accept the morning sun.

This family is raising sheep.

I was most taken with how "swirly" the rocks are.

This is a picture of cliff dwellings. How in the world did they get to them?

I call this one black bird in gray sky. Wow....profound!

More swirly rocks.

The Navajo know this prehistoric Anasazi village site as Kinaazhoozhi, which means Sliding House. It is an apt description because the dwellings were built on a steep slope. Even the ingenious Anasazi builders were unable to keep the walls from slipping down the slope. Evidence suggests that this was a large village from 30 to 50 rooms. Occupation of the site probably began around 900 AD and lasted about 300 years.

A modern day home in the canyon.

More views of the canyon.

At one of the overlooks we met Rodney and Delroy, two young Navajo Indians. These cousins etch designs in the stone from the canyon and sell them to tourists.

Delroy took the time to explain to us what each design means.

They were so sweet and such good little salesman that we bought two small samples of their work.

At the overlook where these two were stationed we found this.

These are so handy because they are trained on what it is you should be looking at. Here's Bob checking it out.

Bob hanging out on the rocks.

I know I already have dead tree quota for today but I couldn't pass this one up.

This is Spider Rock. Legend has it that Spider Woman lives atop the 800 foot monument. She is one of the Navajo's most important deities and is the subject of many stories in the Navajo culture. In one of the stories about her it is said that she comes down at night and takes children who misbehaved during the day to the top of the rock and eats them. It is said that the light or white colored rocks at the top are their bleached bones.

Some more views of Spider Rock. Look at the difference in colors, it all depends on where you are standing I guess.

Yet another viewing and still different colors.

Some final shots of the canyon.....

My hangin' out on the rocks picture.

Back at the campground....our site.

We had our pizza for dinner and it was pretty good! We had the generator running so we had electricity and we watched some old John Wayne DVD's until quiet hours. We used the 12 volt lights afterwards and read until sleep came.

Hey this boondocking is pretty cool! I could get used to this, especially the FREE part. We've decided we could stay here for a week!

One thing we've noticed since we've been here is that Navajo families come to the park with LOTS of water jugs to fill from the spigots around the park. Evidently there is no running water in their homes. Even the smallest of toddlers carries an empty gallon milk jug to be filled. There is a steady stream of families coming in and out of the park for water.

I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings!

6/3/08 Sometimes Best Laid Plans.....

MY plan for today was to get a much needed haircut and get my nails done. Finally! I'm waaayyyy over due for both. When I was finished with those tasks I was going to get our laundry completely caught up. Like I said,,,Best Laid Plans.

We got up this morning and found that we are in for some windy weather the next two days and we had to decide if we were leaving today or staying put until the weather clears. Bob thought it best if we get on our way and I agreed.

Bob said we weren't going all that far so that if I wanted to get my haircut and nails done to do it then and we would leave when I got back. I told him I had to do at least two loads of wash before we could leave.

I had asked the lady here who owns the park we're in for a recommendation on where to get my haircut. She proceeded to tell me that she goes to Esmerelda. Great! Where is Esmerelda? She then told me she was located at the truck stop down the road. Now I'm sorry, I'm sure Esmerelda is a very nice lady and she probably cuts a lot of hair, call me a snob if you must, but I am NOT getting these tresses trimmed in a truck stop! I draw the line there!

I then remembered a salon that I saw when Bob and I stopped for fuel. I was on my way, this head of hair was finally going to get a much needed cut. I found it with no problem but it wasn't open at nine when I arrived. I went next door to the gas station store and asked if they knew when the shop opened as there was no times listed anywhere. I was told that the lady usually arrived between nine and nine-thirty. Fine, I'll wait. To pass the time I called my friend Cindy to get caught up on news from home. At nine-fifty I finally gave up, after all I had laundry to do and to help get the rig road ready.

When I returned Bob mentioned that it didn't take long at all and he expected me to be gone longer. Of course at this point he had taken his eyes off the computer screen to see that my hair had not been cut. Oh well, there's always tomorrow.

I took our two loads over to the laundry room and got them started. Back at the rig we set right in to work to get the rig ready for travel. Almost done and ready to roll I went to get our laundry out of the dryers. Still damp! This is just not my day. I took them anyway and draped them anywhere I could so that they could finish drying while we were on the road.

Our destination today is Canyon de Chelly. We're going to go boondocking for the first time. For those who aren't RV'ers boondocking means that we will have no electric, water or sewer hookups. We do have the generator we bought this past winter and we'll fill our holding tanks with water so we should be ok. We'll use the state park's facilities if necessary.

So we got on the road around eleven for our 165 mile trip. We decided to get gas for the generator, beer and fill the water holding tanks when we got there. BIG Mistake! More about that in a bit.

Because I was deep into a John Grisham novel I didn't pay too much attention to the scenery as we drove. Until I heard Bob's sharp intake of breath. I looked up to see this coming at us.

Bob had pulled off the side of the road as far as he could considering the shoulders had deep declines to them and they were soft. That big boy slowed down also because that driver knew it was going to be a tight fit. He did pass without incident. Whew!

I did snap two pictures as we went down the road.

We finally arrived at the state park and found that there is NO CHARGE for camping there! Oh yeah, this works for me! While I was in the Visitor's Center I asked the Navajo Park Ranger where we could get beer. He smiled and said, "Drive 2 hours in any direction to get off the reservation and you can buy beer. Uh-oh. We planned on being here several days and Bob has five beers. This is not good. Four hour round trip for a beer run!

We finally get into the campground the campsites all look small. We can't look one for yet as we have to find the water station to fill our holding tank. Around and round we go through the loops and we can't find it. We asked several people but couldn't get a correct answer. It's getting late in the day now and we have to find a space. No problem, we'll use the park's bathroom/shower facilities.

We find a space big enough for our rig and start setting up. Darn, we forgot to get gas for the generator! After setting up Bob got ready to make a run to the nearby town to get gas so that we would have electric power. (Until 8:30 that is, the "quiet time" starts then so all generators have to be turned off.) Luckily, we had walked to the bathrooms before he left because we found out there were in fact NO showers! Oh this isn't going to be good. Bob adds jugs of water to his list of things to get.

When he returned he got the generator set up but it wasn't smooth sailing. It was the little things that were getting to him. I'm not happy because things aren't like we thought they were going to be. None of this is going as planned. We are both close to losing our tempers.

It is decided that we do in fact need water! Filling our holding tank with a 3 gallon jug, filling it at a water source and walking it back is not going to work. Bob found a vacant host campsite that has all the hookups available and he hooked our water hoses together and ran them to the water source there.

Meanwhile I put together a Boboli pizza together and got out the toaster oven to bake it in. Nope, not gonna work. We find the generator has to be taken out of the truck because the toaster oven kicks into high gear or something. I really don't know what the problem was I just know Bob is now miserable. Understandably so, it hasn't been an easy day. I wrapped the pizza up and put in the fridge which thankfully is running on propane. OK, what to have for dinner now. Everything is frozen, we have no lunch meats with which to make a sandwich and we're both hungry! Did I mention we were both close to losing our tempers? We finally had some fried Spam, I found a can waaayyyy in back of the cupboard, green beans and stewed tomatoes. Three bites into my meal Bob said something that just set me off and I threw my paper plate in the trash and stomped off to the bedroom. Let me tell you, I was 3 clicks away from selling him on Ebay!

I run up the TV antennae only to find that we have NO channels available to us. Oh great, no TV. It just keeps going downhill!

Eight thirty arrives and the generator has to be turned off. No electricity. Do I dare turn on one of the 12 volt lights so I can at least read until I can go to sleep? I'm not one who can go to sleep at 8:30!

So there was our day. Not one of our better ones, but I think with practice we can get this boondocking thing down.

6/2/08 Painted Desert and Petrified Forest

It was time to get out and see some of the countryside. We drove sixteen miles to the Petrified Forest.

The Petrified Forest National Park is really two parks in one, the Painted Desert at the North end and the Rainbow Forest at the South end. The park covers over 93,533 acres and consists of six separate "forests" .

Wind and running water cut these features from the Chinle Formation deposited over 200 million years ago.

I wish these could pictures could show the colors as clearly as we saw them when we stopped at the overlooks throughout the park. The colors in the desert result from the minerals in the soil. The red color is due to iron oxides.

On clear days, visitors may be able to see 100 miles from the rim of the Painted Desert.

This old car found in the desert.

In this picture below you can see the telephone poles that were planted when Route 66 was first built.

The Puerco River....or should that be river bed?

More than 650 images are etched into the boulders in the pictures below. These boulders are known as Newspaper Rock. The people who farmed the Puerco River Valled anywhere from 650 to 2000 years ago etched these petroglyphs leaving their legacy.

One of the most striking areas in the park is the Blue Mesa. This area features other worldly, almost lunar landscapes with sculpted hills and rocks.

We were all too soon through the Painted Desert and started the tour of the Petrified Forest.

Now to be perfectly honest with you, I expected to see a forest...you know with trees standing upright and green leaves and all. I've never given much thought to a petrified forest before but in my minds eye that is what we were going to see. WRONG!

The name of the park, and its major reason for creation, is the rich collection of petrified wood found mainly in the south portion of the park. It is the most spectacular collection of petrified wood ever found. In many areas large logs, stumps, and chunks of crystal may be found lying freely around the ground.

The petrified wood found in the park began its existence as large trees from an ancient forest many, many years ago. After falling, the trees were washed downstream from as far as 50 miles away onto a flood plain which lay on the current area of the park. The logs were covered by volcanic sand and silt sometimes to a depth of 1100 feet.

Over time, as water seeped toward the buried logs waterborne silica slowly replaced the wood, creating the petrified logs.

Here's Bob standing amongst the petrified logs.

A close up where you can see the logs have turned to stone.

A field of petrified tress that have made their way to the surface.

In the picture below two logs (the black circles) that are working their way to the surface.

We had toured the park and our time here was done. On the way home we had to stop at the grocery store and across from the Safeway was this unusual motel. The Wigwam Motel, where your "room" is a teepee!

After dinner we settled in for yet another non-TV night. We played computer games,,,if solitaire can be considered a computer game and I read for awhile.

I did call Bobby and Shelly, our RV'ing friends from Delaware, to check in with them to find out where they were as I knew they had left their winter perch. What a surprise to find out that they too were in the Petrified Forest all day. We were probably one overlook apart and we didn't know it!

6/1/08 Time To Move On

Our time at the Grand Canyon has come to an end, its time to move on. We thoroughly enjoyed this week. Seeing friends, John and Bonnie McMullen and sharing our first glimpse of this natural wonder with them was...well....GRAND!

We were on the road this morning by ten and we tried to stop in town at the IMAX Theater to see the B-I-G screen movie about the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately, there was no room in the parking lot for us with all the buses already parked there. Traffic was terrible so rather than try to find parking elsewhere we opted to just keep going down the road. I'm sure some day we'll back at this incredible place so we'll catch it next time around.

We did see this one little trailer in the parking lot that I just had to get a picture of, I can't even imagine staying in this! It would be uncomfortable just getting through the door! Bob says that we should have gotten one of those to full time in and we could pull it with a Mini Cooper and gas prices be damned! NOT in this lifetime!

Our destination today was Sun Valley, Arizona and once again we had safe traveling.

After a few stops we pulled into the RV Park gravel parking lot we'll be staying in for the next three nights around three o'clock. It didn't take us long to get set up and soon we were kicked back sitting outside in the nice breeze.

We're staying the ROOT 66 RV Park. No, I didn't misspell it, that's how its spelled.

The office building is colorful to say the least.

As you can tell we are back on Route 66. I wish I had been around here when the Mother Road was in her heyday. It must have been so much fun traveling this route. Heck, we're lovin' it in 2008!

This RV park, as 95% of the businesses around here, sells petrified wood if one is in the market.

In addition, they also have these colorful crystals (?) for sale.

As you drive down Route 40, the interstate highway, you can see the petrified logs just laying in the fields so everyone is in the business of selling it. I think if we wanted a piece of it bad enough we would just go to the field and help ourselves.

We ran the TV antennae up rather than getting the dish set up because we're only going to be here a short time and have plans for our daytime hours. Oh boy! Two, count em', TWO channels! One is in Spanish and the other is a 24 hour a day religious station. I do have my doubts about how "religious" it is because every program wants you to send BIG BUCKS to get whatever video they are hawking. I watched this one show for a few minutes...send $100.00 and in return you'll get a video with "God's secret" on how to be financially secure. Something tells me the only one who is going to be financially secure is the one who is selling this! Then again, with viewers like me he/she won't make enough to pay for the air time!

So we are glad we bought those five dollar movies at Walmart. We watched Broken Arrow with John Travolta and Trapped with Kevin Bacon.

Just as the sun was setting I went outside to make sure the truck windows were rolled up and the doors locked. This is what our evening sky looked like.

I checked our stats for the blog and thought I'd share some monthly totals for May with you.

Visitors to blog: 1680

# of pages read: 2598

Friday is the busiest day for visits and Sunday the slowest.

We've had visitors every hour of the day.

Visitors called 24 different countries home including the US.

Visitors came from 45 states and D.C.

(Some visitors may have only read one page of the blog)

Fourteen people were referred to our blog because they want to know how to kill a groundhog! That's seems to the number one way people are finding us. I didn't realize groundhogs were such a pain and that so many people want to kill them!

Huntingdon Beach, California still comes in first for most pages read. We don't know anyone in this town....I wonder how they found our blog and why they haven't signed the Buddy Map.

Speaking of the Buddy Map....now friends, I really want you to start filling in this Buddy Map for me. Here's how you do it: Click on the Buddy Map in the right hand column, click on Add Yourself to the Map, fill in your name, town and any message if you want to add one, this is optional. You don't need a photo. Then click on Finish. That's it. Easy. Now let's get it filled in, trust me, its a blogger's thing. I can't have other blogs with more red dots on their Buddy Maps than this one has can I?

The counter has turned 26,000 but I guess whoever it was didn't notice because I didn't get any emails or comments to the blog saying, "It's me! It's me!

This was our day, start to finish.