Family Trip to Chinle, AZ

We took a little road trip this weekend to Arizona. My dad served his mission on the Navajo Reservation near the 4 corners area and he has always wanted to take us there. So on Friday we left at 5:00am, most of my family went. All together we had 10 adults and 14 kids. We left Blakelee in Utah with RJ's brother and his wife (she is not a good car seat traveler). Very few of us have ever been to the Grand Canyon, which is sad since we only live 3 hours away from there so we decided to take the long way around and stop in the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon was awesome. It was a little scary because we had so many little kids and there are no fences along the trails we took. We then took a 2 hour drive to Page, AZ to Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell. After only spending about 30 min there we drove another 2 hours to Chinle, AZ which is right in the heart of the Navajo Nation Reservation. Chinle was really interesting they have open range everywhere so there were cows and even horses grazing off side the road right in the middle of town. We spent the night in Chinle and the next morning drove 3 miles to Canyon de Chelly (pronounced Da Shay). We stopped at the visitors center were we took a few pictures near a Navajo Hogan. We spent some time there and the drove just a short distance to the canyon. I thought the Grand Canyon was awesome this was so much better. The Navajo people have lived in this canyon for over 300 years but many other ancient Indians have inhabited this place for over 2000 years. The canyon has seer cliffs that drop from anywhere 30 feet to 1000 feet. There are several look out points, and each one had a different view of the canyon. Some Navajo families still live and farm in the bottom of the canyon. The coolest thing is there are several ancient Anasazi Indian ruins in the cliffs of the canyon. It was just so neat. We spent most of the day in Canyon De Chelly and then drove 30 miles to the town of Pointed Rock. Like I said earlier my dad served his mission there. We couldn't get over to where his lived during that time because the road is very rough and you need a 4x4 to get in there, but we got a general idea of were he served. He had to walk everywhere he went so a typical day for him would be to walk 10 miles to one hogan and then 10 miles to another hogan and then back to his trailer for the night. He really has a love for the Navajo people and has tried to pass that on to us. This part of the country is so beautiful and I would recommend everyone to go there. We drove back to Enterprise that night and got home around 2:00am (we had to make it home for everyones church meetings). It was so fun and like I said above, Canyon De Chelly is awesome.