Sedona

Our first day in Clarkdale, near Sedona, started out cloudy, spitting bits of rain.  We had seen a cute little old town shopping area close by, including a bookstore, a phenomenal rock shop with specimens from around the globe for sale, a pet shop where Colleen got a serious kitty fix from a very friendly cat named Gabby, and the most fantastic antique shop which had two acres of everything from rusting farm implements and gas station pumps to antique jewelry.

Gabby was very happy to purr in Colleen's lap.

So we decided to browse and shop while we waited for the weather to clear.  Which it did not!  By afternoon we were watching the most spectacular thunder and lightening storm we drought stricken Californians have seen in a very long time.  We drove around exploring the area a bit with rain pounding on our windshield, watching dramatic flashes of lightning in the storm darkened sky... then returned to our sweet little apartment to be bums for the rest of the afternoon.

View from our deck on a sunny day.  The mound in the foreground is the ruins of the Tuzigoot Pueblo in Tuzigoot National Monument.

Our second day dawned cloudy but with the promise of dryer weather.  First we explored Montezuma
Castle National Monument.  We took the short walk to Montezuma Castle, a cliff dwelling ruin named for the Aztec Emperor who has no connection whatsoever to the area.

Montezuma Well, also within the park, is the most amazing desert spring, fed by 1.5 million gallons of warm water a day bubbling up from underground and providing a home for several species not found anywhere else on earth.  The entire area was home to a thriving agricultural community from approximately 1200 to 1450 AD.

At first glance, the well looks like the crater of a volcano. It is actually a mountain and crater built up by layers of calcite in the water.

This dwelling is built into the walls of the well next to the only natural outlet, a tunnel through the rock feeding a stream that pops out of the side of the hill. There are still irrigation channels visible that were built 1,000 years ago.

Our next stop was a walk through Sedona's dramatic Red Rocks.  We chose a 4 1/2 mile loop that circled two of the most dramatic formations... Bell Rock and Courthouse Butte.

We saw this huge intriguing plant only in one very dry area along our walk...

...we don't know what it's called, but with inch-long thorns, you definitely don't mess with it.

Ed had spotted a Thai restaurant near our home of the moment, so evening approached we treated ourselves to a delicious Thai dinner, then settled in for the night.

Canyon de Chelly to Sedona

We had nearly five hours of driving ahead of us, plus stops we wanted to make, so we set out early for our drive to Clarkdale, near Sedona AZ...  Our first stop was Petrified Forest National Park which includes the Painted Desert.  We arrived around 10:00 A.M. and set out on the 45 minute drive through the park.  45 minutes with no stops, that is...  Our first stops were at viewpoints overlooking the Painted Desert.  The layers of rock that create the color were laid down over time, then weathered away.  All colors are created by iron and manganeses in the rock, which produces different colors depending on the climate conditions at the time it was deposited.  The day was cloudy but we still saw some beautiful colors.

Ed had spotted a photo in the visitor center of one of the landmarks on the map, the rusting hulk of a 1932 Studebaker abandoned on the roadside of famous Route 66, which bisects this park. The photo reminded him of one taken by his Dad during his move from Missouri to California in the late 1930's. That photo showed a similar car off the roadside in the desert. Could this possibly be the same car? When we get home, we'll have to dig up that photo and compare.

Our next stop was to hike among "badlands hills of bluish bentonite clay" on the short Blue Mesa Trail.  WOW!!!  A beautiful and amazing landscape! The "boulders" you see are chunks of petrified wood.

With an eye on the clock and the miles ahead, we finally pried ourselves away from this canyon. Further down the roads we began seeing more chunks of petrified wood. We took a little walk that shows some great examples of the fantastic colors, which come from the different minerals in the wood as it petrified into rock.

By the time we left the park it was too late to even consider a stop at Meteor Crater.  Worse yet, Colleen was devastated by the news that we didn't have time to stop at "Standing on the Corner Park" in Winslow, Arizona to see the bronze statue of Jackson Browne.  Ed tried to soften the blow by providing her a similar experience in Holbrook.

Standing on the corner in Holbrook Arizona
Such a strange sight to see
It's a girl, My Lord, with a dinosaur...

We arrived at our beautiful little airbnb accommodation in Clarkdale, AZ, near Sedona, late in the afternoon and enjoyed a simple dinner on our deck overlooking the Tuzigoot National Monument and miles of desert and mountains.  We will be here for four nights hiking among the red rocks.

Canyon de Chelly

After a lazy day we finally made it out to see a bit of Canyon de Chelly the evening of our arrival.  We took in the view at a couple of overlooks and purchased a few hand made items from Navajo artists...

...before watching the beautiful moonrise.

We enjoyed a quick dinner out and returned to our room for a good night's sleep.

Fully rested from being bums the previous day, we met our guide for our Canyon de Chelly (pronounced "de Shay") tour at 9AM. This is a National Monument but much of the Canyon itself is property of the Navajo Nation and individual landowners, so we needed to obtain the required permit to enter the canyon with a guide. With this done, we bounced off in his Jeep for a 4-hour slog through sand and mud, dodging quicksand and the occasional other tour Jeep. Our guide, a Navajo who goes by TJ, is a young fellow fairly new to this guiding business, but he knows all the nooks and crannies of the canyon very well since he grew up in and around here. During the drive he stopped often to point out  remains of dwellings nestled in the cliffs high above, and to explain the meanings of the petroglyphs scattered over the walls. Some of the art was Navajo, some Hopi, some ancient Anasazi, and some going back to the Basket Maker culture of 2000-3000 years ago.  Let me digress here to say that "Anasazi" is the Navajo name for the same "Early Puebloans" we have been learning about in the other parks.  The descendants of these people prefer the name "Early Puebloans" as the Navajo name, "Anasazi," translates roughly as "Enemy Ancestors."

Our guide TJ pointed out "trails" of notches cut into the sandstoone that can be used to climb or descend these walls, which can reach 1000 feet in height.  He told us of how he and his brothers and sisters and and cousin-brothers used the trails when they were children, the older ones helping the younger ones.  Also, he was once stranded in the canyon with his wife and two year old son and the family climbed out on such a trail.  TJ talked about the Navajo culture and beliefs, and told us of his childhood encounter with a Skinwalker---a Navajo witch with the ability to shapeshift into an animal form.  At the time his grandmother told him the witch was most likely after his grandfather who was a hand trembler, a type of medicine man.  As we drove, TJ spotted a patch of cactus and stopped to de-thorn and peel the fruit so we could try Prickly Pear for the first time---delicious! Although he had a canned spiel that had been rehearsed for parts of the trip, if he was thrown a question he was always quick with a thorough and knowledgeable answer, often giving the anthropologists view as well as the traditional wisdom of his people, so it was obvious that he really knew what he was talking about. We enjoyed this interesting fellow and a fascinating day.

After the tour we drove along the southern rim of Canyon de Chelly, enjoying the frequent overlooks.

The paved road ends with the view of Spider Rock, an 800-foot rock tower that is said to be the home of one of the Navajos most powerful deities, Spider Woman. No---not THAT Spider Woman. This is the REAL one---Navajo children are told that naughty boys and girls will be ensnared in her web, taken to the top of Spider Rock, and devoured. This is why the top of the rock is white---it is bleached white by the bones of misbehaving youth.  However, she also has a good side as she is the one who taught the Navajo to weave their beautiful rugs.

With that story in mind, I shall try and suppress my natural aversion to spiders and get a good night's
sleep. Tomorrow we hit the road again for a long drive to Sedona.

Vacation from our Vacation

Our next activity is a jeep tour down into Canyon de Chelly tomorrow. (Taking such a tour with a Navajo guide is the only way to get into the canyon). Today we only needed to get ourselves from Farmington, New Mexico to Chinle, Arizona. ---And that's about all that we accomplished.

We were both pretty exhausted from our last two days at Chaco Canyon (plus the 300 miles of driving to get there and back two times) so by the time we arrived in Chinle it was time for a nap.

So for today we will simply report that we took a vacation from our vacation!

Chaco Canyon

We are about halfway through our travels in the Southwest, and we're having a wonderful time! When we look back on everything we've seen and done, it seems like we must have been gone far longer than 3 weeks. We've certainly packed a lot into this time, but it has not been a frantic pace that leaves no room for fun and relaxation. We've had some pretty good workouts on hikes that have been made more challenging by the altitude, although we seem to be getting acclimated to that.

From the outside, it may seem that our vacation has been all about rocks. Looking back on the blog we see underground rocks, pinnacled rocks, hoodoo rocks, really really big vertical rocks, bizarre multicolored rocks, vast canyons of rocks... One might think we are a couple of geology geeks. Admittedly, we are. We both find nature quite fascinating, and regularly find something that requires us to stand in absolute awe. Hopefully our readers have seen the beauty and not become totally bored with us. I can just hear someone say, "Holy Crap---More photos of rocks!!!"

So as you may have noted with relief, lately we have reduced the rock coverage and have been on the "Historical Culture" leg of our journey. With our time in Mesa Verde, now in Chaco Canyon, and soon to be in Canyon de Chelly, we have been fascinated with the intricacies of early Puebloan culture, and charmed by its interconnection to nature. This has been especially strong here at Chaco Canyon. A large part of our enthusiasm has been due to a couple of ranger-guided tours we took. One was a more nuts-and-bolts session, with an extremely involved and knowledgeable park employee who explained some of the ways that their culture influenced their huge buildings. The other was a much more esoteric talk/walk with a park volunteer who encouraged us to look at this canyon, and the world, through Chacoan eyes, and therefore alter our perceptions.  For example, our guide asked our group of about a dozen to stand facing a 100-foot tall, 500-foot wide rock wall from a distance, and relate what we see. I made the observation that the wall appeared to curve gently in an arc, and that the ground before it did the same, so it appeared that we were in a huge natural amphitheater. Also, it did not look like other walls in the canyon; with a relatively flat surface and no rubble debris at the bottom, it appeared to have been artificially shaped.

She then asked us to listen, and she let out a yell. From the rock wall about 500 feet away, a beautiful loud echo resonated. Even a hand clap produced an easily audible echo from that distance. In fact, she pointed to a man-made mound on the other side of the canyon, about a kilometer away, from which she said a voice will plainly echo in this amphitheater. The acoustics in this place that was occupied up until about 1300 AD were perfect.

"Great curved wall that speaks"

On either side of the bowl were situated the two greatest houses of the Chacoan system, one of which was the largest building in the new world until 1881. So it seems that the visual and the audio effects could have been used for maximum dramatic effect for the throngs of pilgrims who came to this place. We then took a walk along the base of the cliff, observing the many petroglyphs and the holes in the rock that had been stuffed with offerings...

...and she pointed out a hole near the center, just big enough for a human to crawl through...

It leads to a chamber several meters inside the rock big enough to hold 4 people. We could imagine the drama of figures emerging from the rock upon command of a voice so far away. In fact, the native name for this rock translates to "great curved rock that speaks."

The entire complex is laid out on a north-south axis, accurate to less than one degree, even though the north star they were using at the time was about six degrees off.  She showed us the notches on the horizon that mark the exact spot the sun rises and sets on the winter solstice... possibly one of their reasons for choosing this site.  In fact, the reason this enthusiastic volunteer left a professorship in physics to live and do research at Chaco is to look for such connections between culture and astronomy.

This talk lasted until after sunset, which meant that we had to negotiate the 76-mile drive back to our room in fading light, and 16 of those miles are on a dark, bouncy, dusty, washboard road with a stream bed crossing prone to flash flooding, and roamed by free-range cattle and sheep. This was NOT fun. But it was worth it.

---So worth it, that we decided to do it all over again on Sunday. We just wanted to experience more of Chaco Canyon. We hiked to the top of the mesa, to the remains of a couple of other houses. On the way we passed offering holes carved into the bedrock, fossilized trails of shrimp and other creatures from when this was part of a vast ocean...

We wondered about these odd markings in the sandstone, until we read that they are ancient shrimp burrows in sand.

A thick layer of rock in the walls are filled with fossils

...and the remains of Chacoan roads, 30 feet wide and lines with stones, that brought pilgrims and traders to this center of culture, religion and politics. We were also delighted to find tiny pieces of pottery, painted with the traditional Chacoan black white patterns, near the houses. Tradition would dictate that pilgrims  bring pottery to these places and shatter it as an offering.  What an offering it must have been to build something of beauty and then destroy it as a sacrifice. It was very special for us to hold a piece of that history, imagining the hands that built it a thousand years ago. We left them atop rocks along the trail so others would see them.

Here are some photos from Chaco Canyon. Since the structures are made of rock, it could be said that we are reverting to our rock obsession. But these are rocks with a human story. We would love to know more of those stories.

The Navajo have deep reservations about disturbing anything at this sacred site. So when they were hired to pierce this rock wall to install a drain, a medicine man required that a rock with the carved hourglass symbol for the Navajo god "Born for Water" be placed above it.

The ruins of a Great Kiva. Wood planks were placed atop the rectangular boxes to create a "foot drum" and participants in a ceremony would dance upon them. The stone box left of center was the fire pit. The stone benches around the bottom are seating for the spirits of ancestors, who watch to be sure ceremonies are properly conducted.

For some unknown reason, certain rooms had doorways built into the corners, as in this upper story. Other doors sometimes would feature "T"-shaped doors, part of which is shown in the foreground. That shape seems to have some special significance in the culture.

Pueblo Bonito, the largest Chaco Great House. This photo shows part of the 1941 rockfall that destroyed about 40 rooms.

Inside Pueblo Bonito

This Elk casually sauntered across the road in front of us.

Yep....another rock!--- But this one guards one of the entrances to the canyon

This character guards the handicapped parking spot. He might also be looking for a handout.

Atop the north mesa.

View of the southern entrance to the canyon, from the mesa top. Pilgrims from the south would enter here.

Pilgrims from the north would first view the canyon from this spot and see Pueblo Bonito---the largest structure they would ever see. Buildings were four, or possibly even five, stories tall. Surely it must have given the impression of a strong and powerful place.

Pueblo Alta, on the mesa top, guided pilgrims from the north to the canyon below. Here is where we found pottery shards.

Looking down on another Great House.

The largest Chacoan Kiva, showing the T-shaped opening. Below that is an underground entryway. The notches in the wall  have a meaning that is uncertain, although some of them align with significant solstice points. This Kiva, the "Great wall that speaks," and Pueblo Alto on the opposite mesa top, are all aligned north/south.