When we woke up pre-sunrise at our Motel 6, the car was covered in frost and I was so glad we didn’t try to camp in the rain the night before.

The swings in weather we experienced along this road trip were insane. 29F on this morning, snow on the road, and then later we’d experience overwhelming desert heat. No wonder I have such a hard time packing clothes for these things haha.

We started in Holbrook, AZ (gateway town for Petrified Forest), hit this dense white-out fog, and headed ~two hours north to Canyon de Chelly National Monument. ‘Chelly’ is pronounced ‘shay,’ but I won’t judge you if you’re still like me and hear ‘shelly’ in your head every time.

The entire drive is within the Navajo Nation. Canyon de Chelly itself is too – it’s owned as a “joint effort” between the National Park Service (who manages the rim of the canyon) and the Navajo people (who manage the canyon floor).

The Monument is situated within a sprawling, active, neighborhood. It seems so disruptive to the people who live there. I can’t imagine tourists in my backyard like that, that the National Park Service is inviting, when you’re from a group that’s already so marginalized by the government.

Spider Rock is all the way at the end of the South Rim Drive, so we headed there first and gradually backtracked all the way to the visitor center. We expected the parking lot for Spider Rock to be somewhat crowded because of how popular it seems online, but we had it all to ourselves.

Spider Rock

The areas of Canyon de Chelly that’d been on my radar before this trip were the White House ruins and Spider Rock. They’re both on the South Rim Drive, so that’s the one we opted to do.

Unfortunately, the White House ruins trail and the actual overlook remained closed when we were there. According to what I’ve read from the National Park Service, this parking lot in particular was super vulnerable to car break-in’s in. So I guess they’re trying to find a way to mitigate that?

There are some awesome stationary binoculars that direct your view to ruins down in the canyon. I’d never seen these before this trip and they’re such a cool idea. In order to find them, your best bet is to focus on the shaded cracks in the walls.

There’s also a sign in the parking lot that specifically warns you about car break in’s, like I said before. Usually when we feel sketchy about the car, one of us will go down and one of us will stay in the parking lot, then switch out. This time we just started sprinting together and we just crossed our fingers haha.

The side walk to Spider Rock is a quick 200 yards to the canyon’s rim where you can walk for a while to ooh and aah at the view before turning around.

Spider Rock was gorgeous and we took a million pictures from every different angle as the sun started to fill the valley.

And of each other too.

Face Rock Overlook

Needless to say, the car was fine. We did run into these cuties along the way..

Face Rock has more binoculars and more beautiful canyon, but more bluey than Spider Rock. More intricate “ruins” within the shady cracks in the canyon wall.

Sliding House Overlook

Canyon de Chelly has been continuously inhabited for over 5,000 years, which is longer than any other place on the Colorado Plateau. People still actively live there. In houses, on farms. I was having seriously weird feelings about treating someone’s literal home as a point-of-interest at a canyon overlook.

Sliding House is the most perfect example of this. We met the person who owns the farm on the canyon floor while we were there. It was a cool moment for sure, but at the same time there’s no way I couldn’t acknowledge that it was a weird vibe for me to be looking at his home like an attraction – with all of the history that hangs in the air.

There is a loose, casual trail you can follow to the overlook areas, but you can walk pretty much anywhere you want along the edge of the rim and on top of the rocks, etc. This entire area is the foundation of a group of structures were people lived, worked. It was so cool to see the stairs carved into the rock and the wear from people using them over time.

I got super focused on all of the foot prints. If I closed my eyes, I could imagine us standing there together but in their time period. I wonder what they’d think to know that we were standing there.

Junction Overlook

Hi. 🙂 It started to get toasty warm outside so this outfit had to happen. After the first couple of days on a road trip, all of my outfits start to look like the ones you put together after deep cleaning your bedroom.

Tseyi Overlook

This one’s super quick.

Tunnel Overlook

Even though Spider Rock is the most aesthetic stop of these because of the notorious rock formation, Tunnel Overlook was my favorite because we met the friendliest people.

The first was someone who lives in the area and paints Navajo pottery and petroglyphs from Canyon de Chelly onto large pieces of shattered sandstone. We ended up buying some art from him and just overall had the most wholesome experience.

The second was someone who grew up in Chinle, AZ (Canyon de Chelly’s town) and hadn’t been back for 20 years. He was soaking everything in and you could see the memories flashing before his eyes. He said the town had grown a lot but the vibe was mostly the same.

It was really beautiful, of course, and here is an access point to the canyon floor where they sometimes lead guided tours.

You can kinda see the artist perched up there right under the canyon rim, down and right from our car in the parking lot.

By the time we were done here, the visitor center was finally open. We stamped our National Parks passport, bought our usual combo of stickers and magnets, and high tailed it to Monument Valley which we were sooo excited for.

Learn more about Canyon de Chelly National Monument via NPS:
https://www.nps.gov/cach/index.htm

A pretty good description of the terrible way the Navajo people were treated in this area between ~1700’s – present, which is not mentioned whatsoever in any area I saw within the Monument:
https://www.nps.gov/articles/dechelly.htm