Fodor's Arizona & the Grand Canyon by Fodor's Travel Guides

Author:Fodor's Travel Guides
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fodor's Travel
Published: 2018-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

PLANNING YOUR TIME

To get even a basic sense of the park’s scope and history, spend at least a full day here. If time is short, the best strategy is to stop into the visitor center, where you can watch an informative 23-minute video about the canyons, and then drive the most magnificent of the two park roads, South Rim Drive. You could, if you’re ambitious, drive both park roads in one day, but it’s better to set aside a second day for North Rim Drive, or take the North Rim Drive as an alternative route to Kayenta, by way of Tsaile. From the different overlooks along the park roads you’ll be treated to amazing photo ops of the valley floors below, and you can also access certain dwellings. For a more in-depth experience, book one of the guided hiking, jeep, or horseback tours into the canyon.

Both Canyon de Chelly and Canyon del Muerto have a paved rim drive with turnoffs and parking areas. Each drive takes a minimum of two hours—allow more if you plan to hike to White House Ruin, picnic, or spend time photographing the sites. Overlooks along the rim drives provide incredible views of the canyon; be sure to stay on trails and away from the canyon edge, and to control children and pets at all times.

The visitor center has exhibits on the history of the cliff dwellers and provides information on scheduled hikes, tours, and National Park Service programs offered throughout the summer months.

VISITOR INFORMATION

Contacts Canyon de Chelly Visitor Center. Indian Hwy. 7, Chinle 3 miles east of U.S. 191 928/674–5500 www.nps.gov/​cach.

EXPLORING

Fodor’sChoice Canyon de Chelly. Home to Ancestral Puebloans from AD 350 to 1300, the nearly 84,000-acre Canyon de Chelly (pronounced d’shay) is one of the most spectacular natural wonders in the Southwest. On a smaller scale, it rivals the Grand Canyon for beauty. Its main gorges—the 26-mile-long Canyon de Chelly (“canyon in the rock”) and the adjoining 35-mile-long Canyon del Muerto (“canyon of the dead”)—comprise sheer, heavily eroded sandstone walls that rise to 1,100 feet over dramatic valleys. Ancient pictographs and petroglyphs decorate some of the cliffs, and within the canyon complex there are more than 7,000 archaeological sites. Stone walls rise hundreds of feet above streams, hogans, tilled fields, and sheep-grazing lands.

You can view prehistoric sites near the base of cliffs and perched on high, sheltering ledges, some of which you can access from the park’s two main drives along the canyon rims. The dwellings and cultivated fields of the present-day Navajo lie in the flatlands between the cliffs, and those who inhabit the canyon today farm much the way their ancestors did. Most residents leave the canyon in winter but return in early spring to farm.

Canyon de Chelly’s South Rim Drive (37 miles round-trip with seven overlooks) starts at the visitor center and ends at Spider Rock Overlook, where cliffs plunge nearly 1,000 feet to the canyon floor. The view here is of two pinnacles, Speaking Rock and Spider Rock. Other highlights on

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