Amazing Arizona

Post date: Aug 11, 2015 3:48:20 PM

Chris recommended that we see Monument Valley and Canyon de Chelly, so on December 6, we returned  to Arizona from Albuquerque.  We stayed in Kayenta, AZ, which is a very small Navajo Nation town on a northern Arizona plateau of about 4,000 feet, close to the border with Utah. It is a short drive to Monument Valley from there.  As you drive, the "monuments" (sandstone buttes rising almost 1000 feet out of an otherwise perfectly flat landscape) appear on the horizon and then slowly grow taller as you approach.  The Valley is clustered with spectacular red and blue-gray layered giants.  The effect is both humbling and dizzying.  We spent the day driving around the Valley.  I probably took 500 photos, none of which really captured the magic of the place.  John Ford and dozens of other directors felt that it epitomized the "American West."  Ford so much so that he filmed "Stagecoach," "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" and "The Searchers" here.  I can understand the temptation to try to capture the place, but you really can't.

The next day, we drove to Chinle, to see the Canyon de Chelly (pronounced "de shay"), also on the Navajo Nation.  Wikepedia says, "Reflecting one of the longest continuously inhabited landscapes of North America, it preserves ruins of the early indigenous tribes that lived in the area, including the Ancient Pueblo Peoples (also called Anasazi) and Navajo."  As you drive along the rim into the Canyon, the walls get higher and higher and the views more spectacular (I found them more and more frightening.), ending with several giant spires that rise about 800 feet from the floor.  The people who lived here so long ago have since disappeared, leaving very little trace, which adds to the mystery of Canyon de Chelly.  Just as in the Grand Canyon, the public is allowed to walk right up to the edge and peer into the canyon.  Mary-jo took advantage of that and I passed.