Canyon de Chelly/Petrified Forest

On March 27, the girls and I headed out of town for spring break.  On Tuesday, we drove to Blanding.  When we reached Moab, everyone was ready to stretch their legs, so we stopped in an area with beautiful red rocks and red sand (just across from the entrance to Arches) and played and made sandwiches for dinner.  Then we spent the night at 4 Corners Inn in Blanding.

The next morning, we got up early and drove about 2 hours to Canyon de Chelly.  Canyon de Chelly is on Navajo land, and many people still live in this beautiful canyon.  Each of the girls purchased a turquoise bracelet from one of the people selling items there.  We drove around, stopping at each of the overlooks to enjoy the beauty of this land.

Sadly, I lost many of my photos of our trip to Arizona.  I lost/had my phone stolen this past week and many of the photos I had taken were on my phone and I hadn't downloaded them yet.  But fortunately, I took quite a few photos on my camera and I'd posted some photos from my phone on Instagram.  So I have some.

Canyon de Chelly is beautiful.

This was my favorite spot.  It is called Spider Rock Overlook.  

Spider Rock

I think this was called Junction Overlook.

Look...you can see some of the farmland used by the Navajo.

While we were driving to Canyon de Chelly we saw what we are pretty sure was a gray fox.  While we were in Canyon de Chelly we saw a coyote or wolf.  We didn't get a very good view, but it looked more like a wolf than a coyote.  

There is a slightly better photo of the ruins in the canyon.  There were several other sets of ruins, some could only be seen with binoculars (which they fortunately provide for you to look through).

You really can't tell, but in some of these photos, there are ruins from ancient Native Americans who lived in these canyons and built their homes in the canyon walls.

In about the center of the photo (near the bottom middle of the canyon), there are ruins.

Such cool rock formations!

After we saw all the sights along the South Rim Drive, we got some lunch and then headed to Petrified Forest.  It was about a two hour drive away, so we listened to a book on CD (The Wandmaker.)  Gabby was so excited to see the Petrified Forest.  I can remember (vaguely) going to the Petrified Forest and to Canyon de Chelly as a child, but it was really neat to revisit it now and to share these things with my girls.  And because Gabby is in 4th grade, we have the "Every Child in a Park" national park pass this year, so we were able to enter the Petrified Forest with her pass (as well as Sunset Crater/Wupatki National Monument and Montezuma's Castle National Monument later in the week).

Painted Desert...it's so beautiful...this picture doesn't do it justice...it's colorful and just remarkable to look at!

Historic Route 66 ran right through the Petrified Forest...so the girls got to stand right where Route 66 used to be.

I love seeing ruins from long ago and learning just a little bit about the people who lived here.  So I loved that there were ruins in both Canyon de Chelly and the Petrified Forest.  

I know the photo is not ideal, but there are petroglyphs.  We saw quite a few.

More petroglyphs.

Petroglyphs

Gabby wanted this to look like she was being blown away and holding on for dear life...but apparently it's pretty hard to get both legs up in the air while holding onto a pole.

Look at that petrified wood!

Petrified wood.  On this walk, there were hundreds (perhaps thousands) of pieces of petrified wood. They are different colors based on which minerals are in them.

Not the greatest of photos, but each of those bumps is a piece of petrified wood.

We stopped at the visitor center at the end and saw a couple of truly ginormous pieces of petrified wood...but the photos are on my (stolen) phone, so I don't have them.   It was a lot of fun to see the fossils, the petroglyphs, the ruins, and the petrified wood.

After finishing at the Petrified Forest, we drove through Holbrook, and headed to Flagstaff where our hotel was.  We ate some food (sandwiches and so on from our cooler), and then the girls wanted to swim in the hotel pool.  So they swam, and I sat in the hot tub and ended up talking to two other moms, one from Canada and one from Vegas.

It was a long, busy, but amazing day!