Canyon de Chelly - Day Two

Today started out with the White House overlook.  There is a trail down to the White House Ruins that can be taken without a guide.  If you want to go anywhere else in the canyon, you must be accompanied.  People are still living and working on the canyon floor, and I can see why they don't want their home to be as over run as Zion National Park is.
Ancestral Puebloans built and occupied this site about 1,000 years ago.  Here is the view from one of the overlooks.

 

We got off to an early start.  It was still pretty chilly.  Notice Jim is wearing a vest.

This tunnel is very near the end of the descent down into the canyon.  At this point the vests were gone.

The walk along the river was very pleasant, with gorgeous scenery.

There are two parts to the ruin.  One is on the canyon floor and the other is on a ledge.  To keep people from vandalizing the ruins, a fence has been erected.  It makes it difficult to get a good picture.  I left the ruins photo big.  Double click on it for more detail.

 At this point we were down to shorts and tee shirts. Note the fence on the right.

This field is at the base of the trail, as it intersects the bottom of the canyon. They're hard to see, but those are sheep in the grass.

We had internal debate about taking the hiking poles.  It was good that we did.  There are many irregular surfaces on the trail down to the canyon.  Some stretches of the trail feature chunky rocks.  Poles were good.

You can see the trail here, winding its way down.

Then it was on to the Junction Overlook.  It's the junction of Canyon de Chelly and Canyon de Muerto.  You can also see more farmland.

Our last overlook was Tsegi.  It's hard to tell because I've cropped all of these photos, but the canyon walls are much lower here. There is much farming here.

We just loved it.  We loved all of it.  This is a good time of year to go.  The crowds were down, and it was really easy to move around.  There were very few people on the White House trail, which was nice.

We stopped in Chinle for gas.  I can't believe someone has not run over this dog.  He's the color of the mud.

Tomorrow we are up and out of Holbrook, heading north.