I felt like breaking these parts up into easy to find photo bombs. After visiting the Grand Canyon, we drove on to Kayenta on the Navajo Nation reservation, stayed the night, and the next morning backtracked a few miles to the Navajo National Monument.
That monument is a large cliff dwelling settlement. A few notes about it, bullet-point fashioned:
- It was far larger than the Tonto National Monument I visited back on '09, and unlike Tonto, you're not allowed to walk around the settlement;
- By "far larger," I mean it likely housed over a hundred people at the height of it's existence;
- The people who lived there farmed in the valley below, and by that we mean, they had some kind of agricultural means that sustained them;
- It was abandoned by 1300, and the people who loved their mostly joined other tribes that helped build the basis of the Hopi, Anasazi, and Navajo.
It was a rather spectacular view, but it was only a view:
It was like a tiny town down there. Ruins are always fascinating.
Heading around you could get a view that helped explain why folks would make a home there---it was exceptionally beautiful:
From there, we drove to the four corners monument. Below I got my chance to snap a picture of the spot where the four states come together in one place:
And then I stepped in all four states at once:
After hitting up Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado all at once, we did a perimeter walk and perused the stalls that were there a few days before Christmas. I found a very nice pendant for a necklace, but it was too rich for my blood right now.
After all that, we took off for points north-east, for Cortez, Colorado and our big AirBnB.
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