Almost a month ago now we drove up to Canyon de Chelly. We left as usually on friday night and headed up to El Morro National monument, which has camping and related to it being in the Navajo Reservation the camping is free. El Morro is a Large rock outcrop with a pool that is not big, but about 12 foot deep when completely full. It's feed by runoff from the rock and is the only water source for about 30 miles. So in the early days everyone stopped here for a drink. While they were here they left their mark on the rock so it has inscriptions from indian petroglyphs and Spanish commanders some in very elaborate script, so I guess they remembered to bring the stone carver with them. Madeline was our guide. From there we headed to Gallup and on through Window Rock along some BLM roads to Canyon de Chelly, we got a flat tyre which ment we were back onto the space saver tyre, this didn't slow us down any since the roads weren't up to more than 50 miles anyway. Our first lookout on the canyon rim was spider rock, in Navajo legend this place is home to spider woman who taught them to weave.
The guard rails on lots of the outlooks in National Parks don't really seem designed for safety all Liam and Madeline want to do is climb on them. So Madeline spent most of the time getting in and out of the backpack. Liam was really good about holding hands and keeping safe.
We camped at the campgrounds of the National Monument which we nice the weather however was not. We had thunder, rain and hail just after we got the tents up. There had been weather like this the previous day as well so we decided it would be better not to do the walk down into the canyon to the white house ruins. We viewed the north rim view sites and headed for Shiprock in hopes of finding a tyre repairer for our flat tyre. There are plenty of tyre repair places in and around Shiprock, we were lucky thou to find one who was open so with new second hand tyre on the car we headed on to Farmington and cottonwood campground on Navajo dam.
We were the only tenters but there were plenty of others in their RV's. Liam helped some ladies who were fishing in the river and enjoyed playing in the sandy arroyo at the back of our campsite. We had a campfire which we cooked our New Zealand lamb chops on, very tasty.
We had our first frost while tenting in America. I biggest problem was getting the tents dry in the morning. We looked around at the lake at Navajo Dam and saw house boats out on the lake befor edrrivinng back to Santa Fe for dinner at Tomasitas