Canyon de Chelly

Canyon de Chelly

Brilliant fall colors on the cottonwoods in the canyon

Before we arrived in Gallup, we had significantly modified our trip.  When we met up with Beth in Moab, she proposed hiking into the Grand Canyon to Supai village.  We really wanted to do the hike, so we shuffled our plans to create 3 extra days – we canceled our reservations at a campground in Canyon de Chelly and in Monument Valley, and pushed up our B&B reservations in Flagstaff.  But we still really wanted to see Canyon de Chelly, so we squeezed it in as a half-day side-trip on the way from Gallup to Flagstaff.

We arrived at Canyon de Chelly (pronounced de SHAY) in the morning, and immediately hiked down into it.  The canyon wasn’t the deepest we’d seen, or the longest, but it was quite spectacular.  The whole thing was made entirely of swirly Navajo formation sandstone, and there was a set of ruins in the bottom.  Our timing was perfect – the cottonwoods in the bottom of the canyon were turning brilliant yellows and reds, but the air temperature was still quite warm, making for a very nice hike.  Afterwards, we visited a few viewpoints along the canyon, and made our way to the Thunderbird Lodge for a lunch of ‘Navajo tacos’ (as recommended by Bruce and April).  A Navajo taco is a gigantic piece of fry bread with taco stuff on it.  Yep, it was delicious.  But the most interesting part about it was its symbolism of Southwest culture – Native American meets Mexican.