Canyon de Chelly

A pleasant change this morning with a 2 minute drive rather than 2 hours (or more) to today's first encounter with the red rocks of Arizona and an added bonus was the blue sky!

Tourist access to Canyon de Chelly is via two drives along the North and South Rims with a variety of overlooks of the canyon. As noted yesterday, I visited the first two North Rim sites last night on the drive into Chinle. I've moved them here.

Yellow dots indicate locations of ruins in close-up photographs.

Overlooks on the North Rim

Massacre Cave
This site is more famous (and named) for a 19th century massacre of Navajo but there are Anasazi ruins high on one cliff:

Massacre Cave ruins

Mummy Cave

 Mummy Cave Overlook

Close-up of Mummy Cave ruins

Antelope House
On the walk from the car park to the canyon viewing sites, there were several trees that were natural bonsais. This juniper was less than 50 cm tall.

The angle of the early morning sun made it difficult to photograph the canyon (this photograph required some significant work in Photoshop Lightroom to get it to look like what the eye sees naturally) but it is a spectacular spot:

There is one ruin site at this location

 Close-up of ruins at Antelope House

Overlooks on the South Rim

Spider Rock

There are two ruins at this site

Close-up of upper ruins at Spider Rock Overlook

Close-up of lower ruins at Spider Rock Overlook

Face Rock

Close-up of right side ruins at Face Rock Overlook

Close-up of left side ruins at Face Rock Overlook

Sliding House

Close-up of Sliding House ruins

White House

Close-up of White House ruins

I love what a different perspective from 600ft above the canyon floor gives to ordinary scenes

Junction

Tseyi

I then grabbed some lunch from Subway - the great oasis in a sea of sugar, fat and salt that is most take away offerings - in Chinle and headed for the 3 hour drive to the Grand Canyon. Needless to say, the weather turned nasty:

Storm viewed from Hwy 264

In fact, there were reports of four tornadoes in northern Arizona today - unheard of according to the locals. I didn't see one but there were a few severe storms around.

I reached the Grand Canyon National Park in time to get some photographs of the late afternoon and sunset. First impression - it is a bloody big hole in the ground! See separate post for photographs.

PS. I did manage to find out how the name Chinle is pronounced - in English chin-lee, in Navajo, ch'en'le - much nicer but almost impossible for those of us who suffer from the English need to fill all the space in a word with sound. Navajo is a beautiful sounding language - softly spoken with subtle pauses (noted as apostrophes above) in many words.