In the land of the Navajo

Day 6: Thursday, March 24, 2016

Wow!  What a day! We got up and got going a touch late, but our first stop was totally New Mexico true.  We went and found a real UFO crash site near Aztec, NM.  The crash happened on March 25, 1948, so we’re a day early for the anniversary, but that’s ok.  We had to drive down hard-packed sand BLM roads to get there, and then we totally took the wrong mountain bike trail, but a nearby geocache got us to the right place in the end.  It was on a sandy desert plateau with high, snowy peaks in the distance. I can see why aliens might have wanted to get a better view.  The story goes that a UFO crashed on the plateau in 1948.  It was 100 feet in diameter and 18 feet tall, and it took the military 2 weeks to remove the craft and the 16 dead aliens inside. There is some speculation that, instead of removing the craft, it was buried, but that’s an awfully big hole for that area. We had fun checking it out, though. 

 

Our next stop was Four Corners.  The monument, on Navajo land, isn’t really much.  I’m not sure it’s really a MUST do, but we had a lot of fun.  The kids had a great time jumping from state to state.  Jack kept trying to be in a state all by himself, but his brothers always wanted to join him.  We were trying to leave the kids in Utah while we took a break much-needed vacation in Colorado, but no such luck.  Oh well.  I guess they are cute enough to keep. We bought arrow-head necklaces and continued on our merry way.

Finally, we arrived at the thing I had been looking forward to for weeks.  Monument Valley!  And it did not disappoint.  It was just SO beautiful.  They say that it’s where the land meets the sky, and I buy that. The different mesas and buttes and spires just soar above the desert floor.  It is easy to see why the Navajo revere the land so much. Standing among these works of art, shaped by the wind and rains  and painted by the desert itself, it is hard to not feel the divine at work in the world. 

I think the boys really enjoyed themselves, too.  There were so many tumbleweeds to find, and rocks to turn over.  We even made a lizard friend! We ended our day with pizza in Chinle.  We had hoped to check out a little of Canyon de Chelly, but it was late.  As we drove into the darkness on deserted reservation roads, we wondered what sorts of creatures you had to look out for in the Arizona desert that might dart in front of your car at night.  There are deer and elk in Arizona, but do they live in the desert? Were coyotes the issue? As it turns out, the answer is horses. Wild horses are what you have to watch out for while driving through the Arizona desert at night. We were lucky enough to not hit any of them, but it was a real possibility.  There were several just hanging out on the side of the road that night, and they all had that wild eye that, time and time again, I have seen in the eye of a deer who is waiting until the last minute, calculating if there's time, trying to decide if another day in this cruel world really matters. In the end, we did not hit a horse. We did have one calamity that night, though.  My phone cord caught fire while it was charging.  Luckily, it didn’t cause any real damage, and hopefully that is the worst that happens, but, as it turns out, cockpit fires are not the most fun things to deal with while on a long road trip. Luckily, I had a spare!

We arrived at our hotel in Holbrook, AZ late and carried the boys in.  I can’t wait to see what they say when they wake up in the morning!