2012/06 Western USA trip - Canyon de Chelley |
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We continued across the desert to Kyenta where we switched from a US federal highway to BIA-59, a Bureau of |Indian Affairs road, a good road considering that it went through empty country. The few towns were not appealing, resembling English council estates. We reached Many Farms, and I began to recognize the names on the signposts, Chinle and Lukachukai, places mentioned in Tony Hillerman’s novels about the Navajo tribal police. It seemed to be the rush hour and everyone who worked in Chinle was driving home to Many Farms. All in their pickup trucks.
We turned at Chinle to enter the Canyon de Chelley, but the visitor centre there was closed and chained off. We had no idea what the time was. I knew that Arizona was weird, but I couldn’t remember the details. Arizona, like Utah, is in the Mountain time zone, but it doesn’t observe Daylight Savings rules, so in the summer it’s on California time. However, the Navajo Nation, which spans Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, ignores the Arizona state and does support Daylight Savings. The Apache and Hopi and other reservations, however, do not. So if you want to know the time, ask an Indian. (To my embarrassment, a Navajo asked me the time and all I could do was give him a range.)
We found the park’s campground, and took a nice shady and cheap site under the cottonwoods. It had been a long day’s driving.
Friday June 15th
Canyon de Chelly (pronounced Shay) is a park shared between the United States and the Navajo Nation and unlike most parks, it is still inhabited. The park has dramatic canyon cliffs with Anasazi ruins hidden away in the overhangs. It has some similarities to Mesa Verde, but the ruins here are scattered along the canyon and mostly inaccessible. The Navajo live in little communities along the canyon rim, and some in the canyon itself, farming the same fields that the Anasazi did hundreds of years ago. As a result, the canyon floor is mostly off-limits except to guided tours.
We stopped at the visitor centre in the morning but it was overwhelmed by a couple of busloads of Indian kids on a school trip. We set off to
drive the south rim of the canyon, stopping off at the overlooks. These followed a pattern. There would be a few cars in the parking lot and displays of goods for sale by Navajo vendors. A trail would lead down to an overlook, usually protected by a short wall of rock. There would be red cliffs and columns, and perhaps a Navajo farm down in the canyon, as in the 
foreground of this picture..
Often there would be an Anasazi ruin tucked away in an alcove on the opposite cliff. Sometimes it was impossible to tell a ruin from a natural feature until we looked at the detail in a photograph, like these. I’ve only just noticed the little arch inside the upper cave
in the picture to the right.
There is one ruin, the White House, that visitors are allowed to enter unescorted. It requires a stiff climb into and out of the canyon and the others would be stuck for a long time waiting for me, but the idea of a solo visit to the spooky ruins was appealing. Then I looked through my telephoto lens and realized that was where the bus-loads of kids had gone! End of idea.
The last group of overlooks were the most spectacular, with a view of Spider Rock, a great pillar rising from the canyon floor. I was all on my own at one of those overlooks when I heard the sound of children’s laughter. The sound had to be coming up from the valley floor, a 
Navaho farmer’s children or perhaps they were Anasazi ghosts
There was also a Navajo selling petrified wood, and I suggested that Sandie go take a look and take Edna along as her haggling assistant. I hadn’t thought about the problems this might cause at the Petrified Forest park..
We went back to the campground to collect the trailer and went to look at the north rim road which gives access to the Canyon del Muerto. This is as morbid a name as it sounds; one of its overlooks is of a ledge where the Spaniards massacred a group of Navajo.