August 16, 2012
I feel like a kid waiting for Santa Claus! The internet man is supposed to be here to hook me up. I have been offline for almost 2 weeks. Talk about going through withdrawal…not only am I away from my kids and grandkids, I cannot even keep up with what is going on in their lives on facebook. But in a way it has been nice, no news, no TV, no outside problems, just enjoying some of the books I downloaded onto the computer before I left and lots of music.
Well, 2 weeks ago I was preparing to load up the Uhaul to come up here to Chinle. For those of you that have no idea where Chinle is…I am 1 mile from the visitor center for Canyon de Chelly. So I am in the Northeast corner of the state of Arizona and only 300 miles away from Gilbert. In many ways it feels a lot farther. Even in Costa Rica it was only a 10-15 minute walk to get on the internet.
The land is beautiful and the skies are amazing. The people have been very friendly, but they are a quiet and reserved people and I think it will take a while to make friends. The city seems to mostly be made up of people that either work for the schools, the district, the hospital or some other governmental type agency. We all live in housing that is provided, mostly in the form of apartment communities. There are homes and trailers around that are obviously not parts of the system and for the most part these are very rudimentary. There are even a few hogans around but they do not seem to be their primary residence but either something left over or used for something else. We are most definitely in the minority but it does not seem to be a problem.
The funniest thing is the horses and cattle that roam the streets. You really have to watch out when driving around or you could end up with a hood ornament. We were sitting at A&W last week and I could see across the highway. There was 4 head of cattle grazing on the side of the road. Eventually one of the cows decided she liked the look of our side of the highway better and stood at the edge of the road. She actually looked both ways and waited for a clearing before crossing the street. I started laughing and told David to turn and look. Sure enough she made it across before any other cars came, but her 3 buddies were not so smart, they just saw she had left and started following. By that time there were some cars, which had to stop to let them cross. Oh, I forgot to mention, when we had driven up to A&W there were 2 horses grazing in the dumpster.
We have taken a couple of short drives to the Canyon. First time we went on the north road and stopped at an overlook of where 2 canyons meet. Very beautiful! And last Sunday we took the southern road and stopped at 3 or 4 overlooks. David talked with some of the native artisans and I decided that we needed to get in shape and come back when it is cooler to take the hike down to White House ruins. This is the only trail that goes into the canyon that outsiders can go on without a Navajo guide. It was late when we were there and it says on the sign it takes about 3 hours to do, besides that I was out of breath just walking around on top. But definitely a place we will take visitors…should be really gorgeous in the fall.
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