We woke up again fairly early because of the heat in the tent and hit the road. Bye bye, Chinle...
As we were driving out of Chinle we realised that we were right at the Canyon De Chelly, so we figured, why not do a quick drive on the scenic loop and have a bit of a look at the views? So we did...
The Canyon De Chelly was and still is farmed by the Navajo people, so as you look down from the various viewpoints along the rim you can see not only beautiful views of the canyon, but the farms and farmhouses of the Navajo people. At each 'lookout' place, a couple of the Navajo's have set up small stalls from the back of their utes, selling jewellery, carvings, paintings and other traditional crafts. We got to the last lookout station and from there you can hike down into the canyon - so we did. As we were pressed for time, and didn't really have a lot of water, and it was getting hot, hot, HOT! - we didn't do the full walk. It was really lovely though and on the way we saw some goats climbing down the side of the canyon - they were walking practially vertically on the rock face, and yet they didn't slip once. Talk about being surefooted. Someone out to patent a pair of shoes made out of goats hooves or something... my Pumas had me all over the place... although I expect more people would prefer to buy "Puma's" than a pair of "Goat's"...
Anyway, back to the story. The plan was to head down to Ganado and then as far down into New Mexico as possible, because the next day we wanted to make it to El Paso, Texas - and hop across the border into Mexico on the pedestrian bridge (we're not mad enough to take the car over there). And apparently at Ganado there's "Hubbel's Trading Post", which is still set up in the style of the old days, so we thought we'd like to see that. This trading post was established in 1878 and still sells local crafts as well as regular groceries, and is a national historical site.
But halfway there we realised that if we'd taken an earlier turning, we could see the Hopi Indian reservation, which according to the guidebook is a "must see". So we did a bit of a wide loop and detour out to see it.
We soooo shouldn't have bothered. Honestly, it was a complete waste of time, effort and money. We got out there, to Oraibi, the oldest inhabited town in the US, and it was surrounded by signs forbidding photography or video recording of the Hopi people or their homes. After a quick walk around, we could see why. Not for religious purposes, like the signs said - but because the homes were a complete embarrassment. They were like little shantytowns, or a junkyard or something - the houses were made out of any old crap they could find - bits of old metal, bits of tyres and so on. Just junk.
And as for the people, well. They just looked like you and me. Not at all like the young girls with the Princess Leia hairdo's that we saw in the museum.
So we left Oraibi and headed off back to Second Mesa in the hope that it would be better - it wasn't - and realised we'd now wasted pretty much a whole day on this crap.
So we hotfooted it to Ganado, which was so much more interesting. We made it there to Hubbell's Trading Post with 45 minutes to spare before closing time (just as well, I would've been gutted if our trip to the Hopi's had cost us our visit to Ganado). The trading post and the area surrounding it was still decked out as in the old days, with all the goods on shelves behind a long, u-shaped counter, just like something out of Little House on the Prairie or Anne of Green Gables. Sooo cute. And outside the building they had a display of farm machinery through the ages (well, through American history anyway) - it was a kind of living museum.
We were there til closing time and then we pressed on as far as we could into New Mexico - but en route the tyre pressure alarm came on in the car. Panic, panic! Out comes the manual to figure out what it meant - and as a result we had to fill one of the tyres with air. But which one? We went to the local servo and the air thing was broken. At the next one the air thingy worked, but the PSI thing did not - so I had to go by KEG instead - Kylie's Educated Guess - and I filled them all a bit. Obviously it was enough to turn off the silly alarm, and I must've got it fairly right, as the tyres didn't blow out or anything...
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