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| Panorama of Monument Valley | |
Heading south from Moab, we skirted the edges of Canyonlands
National Park and Bears Ears National `Monument until we entered the Navajo
Nation on the southern-most, eastern edge of Utah.
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| Driving south into Monument Valley |
Here we stayed in Goulding’s Campground, in
Olijato-Monument Valley, just across the highway from the Monument Valley
Navajo Tribal Park.
We just loved this
campground.
It was nestled in the
crevice of two massive red rock walls and we looked out our front-room window
at the most beautiful view of Monument Valley.
It was hot and dry here too but there was a nice, constant breeze
through this campground that made it comfortable.
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| Goulding's Campground - our HiLo is in the middle of the picture |
This area is rich in Indian culture and in
the history of the Goulding’s friendship and business relationship with the
local Navajos. The rock formations here
are known for resembling animals and other familiar images (ie: “John Wayne’s
boot”). The first known inhabitants of
the valley were the Anasazi Indians who lived here over 1500 years ago. In 1924 the Gouldings moved here and established
a trading post but they are best remembered for bringing the motion picture industry
to the valley which provided income and assistance for the Navajo’s
survival. The first movie filmed here (in 1938) was
“Stagecoach,” starring John Wayne. Some
of the other well-known movies filmed in this valley are: Thelma and Louise, How the West Was Won, The
Trial of Billy Jack, Back to the Future III, Billy the Kid, and Forest Gump. Thousands of visitors from all over the
world now come to see Monument Valley.
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| Us with Right Mitten Mesa in the left background - several famous auto commercials have been filmed here and Metallica made a music video while up on top of the mesa |
While we were here we took a jeep tour with a Navajo guide
and learned so much about the tribal park and the people who live here. Most of the people who live here do not have
electricity or running water. They drive several times a day (our guide said
even up to 5 times a day) to get free water from a fresh water source on the
Goulding property just past our campground.
The pickup trucks, often with small trailers, haul huge water containers
that carry around 100 gal. of water each.
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| Navajo homestead |
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| "female" Hogan with small sweatlodge Hogan in the back |
The wood covered with mud homes that they live in are called
Hogans. The larger (round) Hogan is the
one they live in and is considered “female,”
the smaller (more rectangular) one is the “male” Hogan, and the very
small (also more rectangular) one is the sweat lodge for religious purposes and
meditation. About 300 families live in
the valley year round.
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| Wild mustangs in Monument Valley |
From Monument Valley, we crossed over into Arizona and
headed southeast to Canyon De Chelly (pronounced “d-shay”) National Monument in
Chinle, AZ. This part of the Navajo
Nation was quite different because it definitely doesn’t have the income
resources that Monument Valley has and the poverty is seen in the beggars,
solicitors, stray dogs and cats, and signs that warn tourists to lock their
vehicles and not leave valuables inside.
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| First Ruin - Canyon De Chelly National Monument |
Even the Cottonwood Campground in the
National Park was managed, or maybe better described as “minimally managed”, by
the Navajo nation and was a bit sketchy.
We stayed there two nights and Jerome slept through all the weirdness in
this campground but Jean didn’t get much sleep at all.
The
first evening that we were there a drunk, scruffy-looking guy drove his Polaris
ORV erratically through the campground, rap music blaring, a black pirate-
skull flag waving in the breeze, stopping at many of the campsites (including
ours!), giving the finger, then pointing and shouting “F….
YOU”!
It was first, and hopefully last time (in a campground), that Jean felt
unsafe enough to call the police.
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| pictographs (drawings and paintings) on the walls of Echo Cave Ruin - Canyon De Chelly National Monument |
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| petroglyphs (carvings) on the walls near Kokopelli Cave - Canyon De Chelly National Monument |
Jean had visited here 56 years ago with her family and they
had hiked down the 600 ft. cliff wall to the White House Ruin. She was excited to return here to relive the
memories and experience with Jerome.
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| White House Ruin - Canyon De Chelly National Monument |
This time though we opted to take the
Navajo- guided jeep tour instead of torturing our poor bodies and maybe making
it down the cliff but not being able to get back up and live to tell the story! The tour was wonderful. We were very lucky to get a great guide who
grew up in the canyon and still lives there.
Canyon De Chelly is considered a “closed canyon” meaning that what
happens there is determined by the 65 families that live there and no one can
enter the canyon without a guide. In
fact, the first mile or so into the canyon is a struggle through a foot or two deep
sand and can only be traversed by horseback, foot, or high-clearance 4-wheel
drive. The rest of the tour was also in sand but not
quite as deep. 5 MPH seemed fast under
these conditions! People have lived in Canyon De Chelly’s
several canyons for nearly 5,000 years.
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| if you look closely in the middle of the picture you will see the footholds carved into the canyon wall - this is part of one of the 36 "hidden" trails up to the top of the canyon |
These people included the Basketmakers, the Anasazi (predecessors of
today’s Hopi and Pueblo Indians), and now the Dine’, the Navajo people. As in
the Monument Valley Tribal Park, the families that live here in Canyon De
Chelly do not have electricity or running water either. We did see one home that had solar and we
learned that only 3 of the families stay year round down in the canyon. They have had a 5 year drought here and
since the Army Corps of Engineers built dams upstream, depriving them of their
main water source 9 years ago, it has made life very hard for the people living
in the canyons on their small farms with their animals and fruit trees. All-in-all, we both thought it was worth Jean
being scared a bit while we were there to be able to see this canyon and learn
about the history and the people who live here.
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| mustang colt (it's mother was nearby) - the mustangs in Canyon De Chelly are free roaming but are all owned by the Navajo families that live in canyon valley |
After being in the Navajo Nation for five days, it was time
to move on. ‘Until our next blog, we send you our best wishes and hope all is
well for you and yours. Jerome & Jean (and Carly, too)
