Canyon de Chelly

Antelope Ruins, Canyon del ChellyOn Monday of this week, after hiking in Arches National Park, Husband and I drove through Navajo Nation lands to Chinle, Arizona, situated at the mouth of Canyon de Chelly (pronounced, "Canyon duh Shay"). The canyon used to be the home of Anasazi people, who built their villages into the walls of the canyon or at the base of the massive walls that rise up hundreds and hundreds of feet.

Eventually the Navajo people arrived in the region and found the old Anasazi villages abandoned and crumbling. The Navajo have farmed and herded down in the canyon for centuries now. Visitors going into the canyon must have a Navajo guide, with the exception of one trail--the one Husband and I hiked down into the canyon on Tuesday morning to see the Whitehouse ruins.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. On Monday evening we arrived at the top of the canyon, looking for the viewpoint down on the Antelope ruins. Right by the parking lot was a young Navajo man working on etching a pot. His name was Albert Bia, he said. He had learned this craft in high school, where all Navajo young people learn the arts. But he'd not appreciated it until after he went to Phoenix to live for a while, and then returned to his native lands. Then he picked up his rusty skills, honed them, and now makes a living doing lovely work.

Below is a plate he made showing the bear claw, Kokopelli characters, and feathers etched in all around. I don't recall what the diamond-shaped emblems represent. We loved his detailed, beautiful work, and bought a nicely shaped pot.
I asked Albert what his last name, Bia, means. "Oh," he said. "My uncle used to work with the agency for tribal matters, and because the agency was the Bureau of Indian Affairs, they would just refer to him by those initials: 'BIA.' So Bia is our last name!"
The next morning husband and I arrived early so as to take advantage of the cool of the morning for our hike into the canyon. Thinking of the 2-1/2 miles down into the canyon with a drop in elevation of 600 feet, and then climbing back up again, I had woken up in the night and thought I must be crazy to have agreed to this hike. But I try to be a woman of my word. With the rays of the early morning sun saturating our view, we headed down the steep trail.

It was warming up rapidly, but the trail was beautiful, hugging the red rock walls with plenty of vegetation, birds and lizards to look at. We happily trotted down the switchbacks, our shoes getting a good grip on the rough stone.
Husband took lots of pictures, but since I'm just posting my photos here, you're getting my view on the hike. Husband was wearing his special desert hiking shirt, a tie-dyed t-shirt from Tubac, Arizona. Somehow it seems rather in style in places like this!
Finally we reached the bottom of the canyon, dropping into the sandy riverbed and rounding the corner from the place where the trail emerged by a little Navajo hogan and sheep pen. The canyon walls seemed to soar up above us for a mile.
And then, suddenly there we were below the Whitehouse ruins, named after one of the buildings that has kept its whitish hue over the years. It was an impressive place, still quiet in the early morning with the vendors and other visitors having not yet arrived.
It was time to head back up the trail. I was dreading it. Here's Husband just passing the hogan and the sheep pen, which "accidentally" got in my picture of him. We were not supposed to take pictures down there of the Navajos, but there seemed to be no one around.
On the way up, we spotted four goats trotting down the trail up above us. Husband wasn't interested in meeting billy goats on the trail, so we were happy to see them take off across the face of the steep sandstone cliffs. You only see three in this picture because one little guy was reluctant to strike out across the steep incline, and hung back for a while before making a run to catch up with the others.
Finally we huffed and puffed our way back over the rim of the canyon, just in time as we'd just finished drinking the water we'd taken with us. Husband visited the point for one last look over the vista. It had been a delightful visit, with plenty of food for the eyes and a good feeling of having gotten our exercise for the day.