Canyon de Chelly

4/8/2011

            Today we went on a tour in Canyon de Chelly and saw some cool stuff. We saw some more pictographs, ruins, and very few petroglyphs. We listened to Ron, our Navajo guide, as he told us about history of the Ancient Puebloans and the Navajo.  He explained what the pictographs meant, so that was very cool. Oh, It was VERY windy today. The wind would pick up the sand and throw it everywhere. I was happy that I brought my glasses. [MH] As soon as I saw the all day “modified” tour truck I was relieved. The truck looked like some one had strapped a HUGE greenhouse to the back of a pick-up truck.  It also ran on propane gas! At some of the ruins as I got out of the truck, the wind greeted we with guess what.… sand in the face! Ron talked about The Navajo not having electricity. He said. “The Navajo tribe bought solar panels but they have a lot of lightning”. My mom asked, “Oh, so the lightning strikes the solar panels and they die?” “No,” answered Ron.  “ The lightning is too much light and the blow out.”  The Navajo farm in the little canyons throughout the area.  The river runs right down the canyon.  Our tour went down 2 large canyons to lots of ruins,  and drove through the stream.  The Navajo still live down in the canyons and practice dry farming: they didn’t water their corn, squash and fruit trees. For corn they just rely on rainfall. For squash they planted it closer to the stream. The fruit trees they have adapted to the little rainfall.[ZH]  Canyon de Chelly is a beautiful red sandstone canyon.  The ruins we saw we all cliff dwellers.  The pictographs were extremely well preserved and were from both the ancient puebloan era, and the more recent Navajo past.  They were gorgeous   Although you could not go into any of the ruins, seeing them from a distance, tucked into the red flowing rock was still amazing! {KS}