Two weeks ago, my husband, Lexi, and I went on a trip in a far-away corner of Arizona, about a day drive including bathroom and shopping stops. My husband had been wanting to see this mecca in the middle of high country of Arizona, kind of a wind-swift, treeless, nondescript countryside, with only occasional shrubs growing. I never heard or seen this before, unlike Grand Canyon which is famous worldwide.

We thought that it would help Lexi to get out of the house and get her mind occupied on something. We bought a tent for Lexi and I to sleep in while my husband had the car to himself. We brought everything we needed to get by comfortably including firewood.  We love sitting next to a fire, sipping a cup of tea and at the same time enjoying the dark surrounding with occasional uninvited visits from the bugs.

While I was preparing dinner, Lexi volunteered to assemble the tent, and my husband unloaded the truck. I was especially thrilled that Lexi offered to do a semi-challenging task of setting up a brand new tent given her condition. And she did amazingly well in no time with zero help.

Sleeping in a tent was quite comfortable with queen-sized air mattress spread over the tent floor and comfortable pillows, quilts and blankets to keep us warm. I was sleeping like a log until I heard this  squeaking noise from behind us at 3 AM.  It was my husband re-inflating his mattress because evidently it had a pinhole somewhere that deflated  the mattress slowly over the night.  I was pretty sure he wasn’t happy about it, but it was either get up and inflate the bed or sleep on the cold ridges of the truck floor in the wee hours of a very cold morning. What would you rather do?

Got up at 7:30 AM and shortly thereafter, we drove 12 miles to see Canyon De Chelly. Lexi didn’t want to wake up that early no matter how hard I tried to get her to come with us. We had no choice but to leave her in the tent with a promise to be back in 2 hours, instead of waiting for her to get up for who knows how long and by then it would be scorching hot in the canyon. It was so beautiful up there, so many interesting things to focus my camera that we lost touch of time, and before we knew it, the clock said 12:30 PM….oooopssss!!

Lexi was fuming mad and made us drive her up there again taking the south side route as we already covered the north side. It took a while before her anger subsided.

Canyon De Chelly is totally a wondrous place. I was mesmerized by its pure natural beauty. Nearly 5,000 years ago, Navajo Indians lived here.  It was such a beautiful place filled with spectacular rock formations, and green luscious trees in between canyons. So beautiful that I rank it second behind Grand Canyon. Sadly though when the Canyon was established as a monument in 1931, people had to be relocated in the higher elevation though some still own a farm where they grow apples, peaches, and corn. In fact, I had a chance to talk to one of the Navajos (picture below) who used to live down there and I could tell how proud she was of the place she called home many years ago.  She now sells affordable home-made jewelry made out of juniper seeds, and some stones.

Although, the Canyon is under the jurisdiction of the US government, it belongs to the Navajo people who I considered the most industrious, artistic, and skillful, of all the indians in the USA.

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