You all will be amazed, but we did not stay at a Walmart last night! I know you are all amazed! We slept at Meteor Crater RV Park near Winslow, Arizona. Meteor Crater is a huge hole in the ground where a 54 yard meteor hit the earth at 45,000 mph (that's about how fast Dave takes the turns when I'm trying to make lunch). This created a hole 4,000 ft. around, and 570 ft. deep. OK I must be honest, we were to cheap to actually see the hole, but I thought I would fill you in on the info. We left the campsite and headed to Winslow, Arizona for the sole purpose of standing on the corner. For all of you that are too young to remember the song "Take it Easy" by the Eagles, go to Limewire and download it or ask your parents if you can borrow their 8 track. Anyway, we then drove to the Hopi Indian Reservation. The reservation has three Mesas, Mesa 1, Mesa 2 and Mesa 3 (I'm sure that took them a long time to name). This was a cultural treat to see how the Hopi live today. I have to say, on first glance I would never want to live there. It is very dry and hot and homes look as if they are falling apart. You are not permitted to take pictures anywhere on the reservation, so of course I had to sneak one (I would never be allowed a Jr. Ranger badge). Anyway, at third Mesa we decided to stop into their town grocery store so we could see what it was like. Besides being verrrrry small (a little bigger than 7-11) the food was very similar (it seemed like they had some Mexican brands of some foods). The boys got a weird "pump your own" Slurpee (I think it was called slush puppy. We than went to another town on third Mesa called Oraibi, which is the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in Northern America. They still refuse to have water or electricity. The whole city is built on top of the the still partially standing ruins of their ancestors. We bo
ught a Kachina doll from some very friendly Hopi women. Each doll has a history and the women told us about each doll that they or their family had painted. We bought the Grandmother Kachina, she supposedly, watches over the family and is given to a child at birth. We then walked around the ruins, in the rubble you could find a ton of old pottery pieces, it was really cool and I very much wanted to take a piece home with me, but you all will all be amazed to know that I followed the rules and left the pieces were their ancient ancestors left them (See I have Jr. Ranger potential). We then drove through to the Hopi reservation and the Navajo reservation on our way to Canyon de Chelly. If you ever have the opportunity to see this Canyon... "jump on it," because it is awesome. Basically it is a 131 square mile Canyon in which the Navajo and Anci
ent Pueblo people live. The cool thing about it is the Navajo didn't live on the canyon floor they made their home in the middle of the cliff (not the top of the cliff,
see pics in my pic post above). It was crazy to see their ruins in the rock. I figured they must have felt both safe and unsafe at the same time. There is no way anyone could get to them without them seeing them and shooting them with an arrow
, but they are also in
danger every time they stepped out the door.
(could you imagine if you had kids! You would never sleep, or if you were a sleep walker...you would be a goner). Well the canyon itself is gorgeous from the rim, but they have this trail that takes you over the ledge and zig-zags you to the bottom. It was such a great decent to the bottom. You go through blasted out tunnels and the view is incredible. When you get to the bottom the view only gets better. I love to take pictures and this place is a photographers dream. At the bottom there is a
ruin called the
White House.
This is a great example of a Navajo pueblo (home) in the cliff wall. You can also see petroglyphs around the house. It is so cool knowing that people of another generation left their mark on the rock. I have so many pics it's hard to decide which ones to post (look at my pic post above). The walk back up was much harder than the walk down, but it is so well worth it. It was dinner time when we got back to the RV. We headed to A&W and hit the road to Albuquerque. I'm writing this on the 4 hour drive. Thanks again for the comments!! We love to read them!! Please forward our blog to anyone else that might want to read it!! Miss you all!
