“North Country winters keep a-getting me down . . . I ain’t turning back to living that old life no more” – Old Crow Medicine Show
Day 24 and we’re over halfway gone. Sad to think that three weeks from now this will all just be memories. As a bit of consolation I did make yet another reservation for #RTXIX today, planning has become a year round event.
We woke up in our tents at Navajo National Monument this morning and had camp packed up by a quarter to eight. We choked down our now habitual breakfast of Clif Bars / PopTarts and Molly downed a can of cold coffee concentrate. After a quick drive to the visitor’s center we pulled on our boots, lathered on sunscreen, and met our ranger guide for the day, Cassandra, on the back patio. We were joined by one other couple from Boston for the hike to Betatakin Canyon and Dwelling.
The descent into the canyon was quite pleasant since the hiking was all downhill and we stopped frequently to listen to Ranger Cassandra talk about the details of how her family uses many of the plants native to the area for food, medicine, and goods. Although we knew about many of these uses she talked through the entire process of how the plant parts are gathered to how they are prepared and used.
Eventually we reached the bottom of the canyon where we walked through a bit of a relic forest, named because it was left behind after an ice age would have covered much of the area in similar forest 10,000 years or so ago. It was a unique desert oasis with pine trees and aspens similar to what we’ve seen at much higher elevations in Utah and Colorado mixed with the pinyons and junipers that are more typical in this area. Eventually we turned a corner and saw the entirety of the Betatakin Village in an alcove in front of us.
While it shared many similarities with other cliff dwellings that we’ve seen it had several features that immediately made it stand out as unique. Specifically, at least one of the rooms still had its roof intact. Ellie noticed the ladders that are typically reconstructed and placed in other dwellings looked a bit different and asked the ranger about them. We learned that although they are now held together with wire the wood they were made from was original and they were now placed just as they had been left. In short, this was by far the best preserved / least reconstructed cliff dwelling we’ve ever seen. There is a second, even larger, and just as well preserved dwelling at Navajo NM, but it’s a 16 mile hike, so not in the cards for today. Hopefully we’ll be able to return on a future trip!
Our next stop was Canyon de Chelly National Monument where I am now writing from the lodge. The canyon is beautiful and as a part of the Navajo Nation still inhabited and worked by Navajos.
For dinner tonight we visited the Junction Restaurant in nearby Chinle, AZ. The Junction is a mash-up of a Best Western, Pizza Hut, Diner, and traditional Navajo Restaurant. Before leaving on the trip we watched several episodes on “The Goldbergs” with the girls including the one where Barry learns not to order fish at a steak house the hard way. Tonight Molly and Zoe learned not to order the chicken tenders at a Navajo Restaurant / Pizza Hut. I ordered the Navajo Sandwich (shredded beef, grilled onions, chilies lettuce and tomato on Navajo fry bread) and it was delicious.
