Nearby Attractions
Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park is about three hours from Canyon de Chelly. Its red rock pinnacles and buttes were made famous by the western movies of the 1930s and, more recently, by automobile advertisements. It is a place of supernal beauty, and if you’ve traveled that far you should press on to the aptly named Valley of the Gods, in Utah. Hubbell Trading Post, a national historic site, is in Ganado on Route 264, south of Chinle. Looking much as it did a century or more ago, it has the best collection of Navajo rugs anywhere. There’s a beautiful four-hour round-trip drive from the canyon to Tsaile and north to Lukachukai, a trim and prosperous Navajo town with a superb and sincere trading post, and then up the winding Navajo Route 13, through rocks carved by some cosmic Henry Moore, to Buffalo Pass among spruce and ponderosa with the forest floor covered with ferns. Here, you can see for milesto the east and west, including the central Navajo symbol, Shiprock, rising from the New Mexico desert. Rough side roads take you into high mountain meadows and astonishing vistas.
Inside Tips
The most scenic approach to Canyon de Chelly is north on Route 12 from Window Rock, the Navajo capital, past beautiful red rock ramparts and through high montane forests to Tsaile, then west to Chinle and the canyon.
This is the arid Southwest, so take water along if you are going to be out for more than an hour. The canyon rim varies in elevation from about 5,500 to 7,000 feet—take it easy until you’ve acclimated. Watch out for wandering livestock on all Navajo roads, especially after dark.
The only cellphone network that seems to function in the Canyon de Chelly area is Cellular One (and that’s only when the antenna isn’t overloaded). Alcoholic beverages are barred by law on the Navajo and Hopi reservations. –J.P.
Pinterest
