CANYON de CHELLY

The Penguins join in a Kokopelli ritual on Old Route 66!!!

Kokopelli is a 'fertility deity' and is ususally depicted as above.  It is honored by many Southwestern Indians (Native Americans if you want to be PC), and this 'god' presides over childbirth and agriculture....and is often a bit of a jester and loves and represents music).

 

Canyon de Chelly (pronounced de Shay) is a gorgeous place.
It is one of the oldest, continually habitated places in North
America, and for the last 350 years has been the sacred home
land of many Navajo Native Americans.

 

Canyon de Chelly was established as a National Park
Monument in 1931 and it preserves ruins of the early
indigenous tribes that lived in the area, including the
ancient peublo peoples (also called Anasazi) and Navajo.
The monument covers 83,840 acres and encompasses the floors and rims of  three major canyons: de Chelly, del Muerto, and Monument.  These canyons were cut by streams with headwaters in the Chuska Mountains just to the east of the monument.

 

 

Some 40 families remain living in the canyon (gives a whole new meaning to walking to school, eh?).  They farm and raise livestock and also make and sell their wares to tourists on the canyon rims.   You can choose from hand painted pottery to leather goods to painted stones to reasonably priced hand made jewelry.   We thought the hand painted stones were very nice so we picked one out from Calvin....a 28 year old very talented Navajo fellow who picked up the art from his dad and grand dad.

Here is Pam with Calvin Thomas and the very colorful stone we purchased from him as a momento of our visit to the canyon.  Calvin, a very nice young man, took great pleasure in explaining in some detail his painting of the ancient pueblo with Navajo pottery in the foreground and corn stalks which the Navajo hold sacred.   (a little known story about the Navajo Code Talkers in WWII tells about the code talkers who carried pollen dust from corn stalks back home and used it in a praying ceremony to keep them safe as they landed on the Pacific Islands, using their unwritten Navajo language as code talk the Japanese could not decipher).

 

 






To the right and below you can see the ruin remains of the Ancient Pueblo people, the Anasasi, who inhabited Canyon de Chelly for many hundreds of years.

 

 

The beauty of the canyon is timeless.....much like a "scaled down" version of the Grand Canyon (which is coming up on our trip things to do very soon).   To stand on the rim of the canyon and listen to the quiet...to the wind as it rustles around the canyon walls....and watch the hawks soaring on the wind and thermal currents...and feel the history and the beauty and the peace of one of nature's wonderful spots....it can be a spiritual experience if you let it.

 

 

 

Canyon de Chelly, in Northeast Arizona, is a two hour drive from where we are staying in Gallup, NM.   We depart Gallup on Thursday the 21st and head to Williams, AZ, some 200+ miles West.   On the way we will stop just of I40 to visit the Petrified Forest, another natural wonder and National Monument.   Before we leave Gallup we plan a quick stop at a truck service garage here in town to have someone check our windshield wipers....they are not working as they should....and while there we may take advantage of their truck scales and weigh the motorhome to be sure we are not exceeding our Gross Vehicle Weight (GVWR) of 32,000 pounds.  And right next door is a truck wash....so the motorhome and the mini cooper may get a treat (most campgrounds do not let you wash your vehicles at the campsite).

 

So, stay tuned for the next blog....and continue to watch for the penguins....you never know when and where they will show up!!!

 

And PS to all the folks back home in the NE....sorry to hear some shoveling may be required this week......!





And PPS....if you do ever find yourself in Gallup and you like Mexican food (the real stuff), do yourself a favor and find El Metate on West Mesa St.   Better, genuine Mexican food is hard to come by...........a great place!!!