Today we headed out of Winslow and onto the Navajo Reservation....destination Canyon de Chelley (Shey). It was a pretty uneventful trip up to the canyon except we can say that it was pretty frustrating to have a road as straight as this and have a speed limit of only 55 mph. Really Stevie just wanted to drop the hammer and go FAST!

So we arrived in Chinle and met our Navajo guide Aaron. Although Canyon de Chelley is a National Monument it sits on the Reservation and thus you can only enter the canyon with a licensed Navajo guide in their 4 wheel drive vehicle. So, we got into Aaron's Wrangler and we were off! Here were some pictures of our venture out into the canyon. Right now the "wash" as it is called since it is sometimes completely dry and sometimes up to 4 feet deep was about 2 feet in the deepest areas.

We saw more petroglyphs from up to over 2000 years ago! Pretty amazing that these still remain! See this one of a hunting party?

And the humpbacked flute player?

And the antelope?

We saw lots of old ruins from the Anasazi people! Still I am amazed at how they climbed up into these homes and how they built them. Aaron said they either had ladders or build notches in the stone. Oh yeah, so that would have been easy for me....

Finally we visited Katherine a Navajo woman who comes into the canyon every morning to do farming of her garden and animals and work on her weaving and then leaves the canyon every evening. She farms the land that has been in her family for generations. Here she is demonstrating how she makes her own yarn and then weaves her rugs. Amazing.

And finally we arrived tonight in Monument Valley. We will tour tomorrow, but here is a preview as this is what we can see from our balcony!