Great Adventures with Bob, Beth & Toby

  Blog post #20 Pronounced "canyon de shay", this gorgeous canyon in northeast Arizona sits on Navajo tribal land though the entrance is managed by the National Park Service.  We stayed in a small lodge run by the native people.  It was one of our best stays.  The prominent feature in the canyon is called Spider Rock spire.  It rivals the Grand Canyon for its beauty.  No one is permitted to go into the canyon without being on a guided tour.  The Navajo still live in the canyon and farm the land.  It was truly one of the highlights of this incredible trip.   The valley where we could see a small farm and ranch Toby loved the canyon! Spider Rock Spire

  Blog post #19 Sorry for the long delay on posting.  We've been having a great time with our kids in the sunshine of Oro Valley just north of Tucson.  Hope you and yours had a great Thanksgiving holiday!  I'm going to keep posting our adventures even as we prepare to leave to return home. As we entered Arizona, we drove through stunningly beautiful Monument Valley.  Bob found the place where Forrest Gump stopped running.  Most of you probably remember the movie and thus the scene, but just in case...here's Forrest... And here's Bob... :) It was quite a spectacular location, no wonder they chose it for the movie! More photos of Monument Valley.  The weather was a little overcast, so the colors of the red rocks are not as bright as they might be otherwise.

  Blog post #18 We had a few more sights to see after leaving the 4 corners.  We stopped at Hovenweep National Monument where we took a nice hike around the rim of a canyon and saw some more cliff dwellings and ruins from native peoples who built communities but then mysteriously left them and moved on.  We learned so much about their way of life and their beliefs.  They don't consider that the sites were abandoned, but are still inhabited by their ancestors.   In this picture below you can see Ute Mountain in the distance. This was the first stop on our a long day's journey.  You may not be able to follow this map, but the F is Farmington where we had been staying, then the 4 corners, then Hovenweep, then Mexican Hat, and finally our overnight in Chinle, AZ.  All 4 states in one day...whew!   Here are some views of Mexican Hat.  A monument in the middle of nowhere that sort of looks like a Mexican sombrero??  Maybe more like a...

 Blog post #17 I have wanted to visit the 4 Corners for a very long time.  I always thought it was a cool place, but when I started teaching GED classes, I would give my students a map of the U.S. and ask them different questions about the states.  One of my favorite questions was "which 4 states meet in 1 point."  It's just so unique and interesting (to me!).   Not sure my students were as intrigued... So our next day from Farmington, we traveled to the point where New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona meet. It is located on Native American land and we had to pay $8.00 PER PERSON to get in, but oh well, have to do it!  Toby could not go onto the monument so didn't have to pay for him!

  Blog post # 16 Spoiler alert:   We made it to our final destination safe and sound on Friday, November 17th!  But you may be interested in seeing what we did on our last few days on the road. November happens to be Native American Heritage month.  We celebrated by visiting some well known national parks and monuments where we got to see remnants of where and how people lived before Europeans and later Americans came and made their own claims to the land.   We were staying in Farmington, NM which is in the northwest corner of New Mexico.  From there we visited in order, Mesa Verde NP, Aztec Ruins National Monument, Hovenweep National Monument, Canyon de Chelly, and Montezuma's Castle.  We also traveled to Mexican Hat which is a stunning rock formation in the middle of nowhere and Monument Valley which was an amazing display of rock formations through a long stretch of Arizona.  Four states (New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and Arizona) and a lot o...

  Blog Post #15 After leaving Santa Fe, we stopped briefly in Los Alamos, NM which is the site of the designing, testing, and building of the atomic bomb.  This will be significant to those of you who have seen the movie Oppenheimer.  He and others were involved in the Manhattan Project.   Statues of Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie Groves After that we went to the Bandelier National Monument which is the site of Native American Pueblo villages.  The homes were built in the side of the canyons and can be visited by climbing up ladders to the entrances.   I climbed up this ladder and took a picture from inside the home.   Don't love climbing ladders but it was worth it.