Oct. 15/10 Chinle and Canyon de Chelly

After Page and Antelope Canyon we had a long day in the car as we moved on to Navajo Country, with our final desination being Chinle.  We got to see more of the country than initially planned when we missed a turn off that would have shortened our trip.  So, after a long day in the car we pulled into Chinle.  Loosely quoting Cher here:  "When you come to Chinle, you don't come for Chinle, you come for the canyon".  After we drove through Chinle and all its attractions, Burger King, A & W, and Church's Chicken, we pulled into the Holiday Inn, avoided all the stray, homeless dogs (where is Best Friends when you need them?) and settled in to an early night because of our early jeep tour in the morning.

Our tour guide, Ben Teller, met us at the lobby door, we crawled into his borrowed jeep and off we went to Canyon de Chelly, famous for being the starting point for the long walk of the Navajo.  The tour consisted of an interesting drive through the sandy bottomed canyon.  Our guide Ben, was in his mid-seventies and had lived his whole life in the canyon, so he was able to share a lot of interesting history in information about the canyon.  We saw a lot of early ruins and ended up 10 miles down the canyon at Canyon del Morte(sic), at Antelope House and Ben's house.

Later that day we did a 2 hour hike down to the canyon floor to see the White House ruins.  It was a beautiful hike and not too strenuous.  We had an early night again, avoided the hotel restaurant (we learned our lesson from the night before) and got ready for our trip to Monument Valley.



Canyon de Chelly

M & K

Antelope House









At the start of the White House trail



Mary and Ben (Ben's house in background)