Four Corners

We left Santa Fe on a sunny Saturday morning and travelled down the interstates for a couple of hours through Albuquerque and on to Gallup. There we traded the interstates for lesser highways and made the trade-off of the semis for the quality of the roads. This was especially noticeable when we crossed into Navaho country, a large swath of New Mexico and Arizona administered by the Navaho Tribal Governments. One compensation though, the Navaho authorities recognize daylight savings time (unlike the rest of Arizona) so we would have no time changes for the next week or so. We stopped at the Hubbell Trading Post, a national historic site, which has both historic displays and Navaho items for sale (along with the usual touristy snack foods). There were some gorgeous Navaho weavings (with prices in keeping with the quality) and a loom set up in the corner of one of the rooms with a rug in progress. In the field surrounding the trading post was a flock of Churro sheep (the first I had seen) and some fleece airing in one of the barns.

From here it was a half hour or so to our campsite outside of Chinle, Az at the Cottonwood Campground at Canyon de Chelly National Park. This campsite, also administered by the Navaho, has 93 sites (but only about 60 were open). The sites are paved, with bbqs (no fire pits), and the campground has flush toilets and a dump station with water available for $14 a night. By the time we arrived the clouds had moved in and there was a fierce wind blowing so we did not take the drive around the rim of the canyon. In the evening the rain started and it poured overnight (our first significant rain since Oregon). When we awoke in the morning and surveyed the puddles outside we were glad of the asphalt sites.

We continued on up Hwy 191 through more Navaho country, on roads that often resembled a roller coaster, past homes (many with tires on the roofs??), ranches, open range with horses, cattle and a couple of mules on the road that we had to stop for and then came to some scenic areas around Round Rock and Rocky Point with their distinctive rock formations. After an hour or two we came to the intersection of Hwy 160 and the road improved and shortly we arrived at the Four Corners Monument. This monument is also administered by the Navaho and after paying our $10 entry fee we proceed to the monument, the only place in the US where four states (Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah) meet. The monument is surrounded by booths where natives sell crafts (mostly jewellery). There is a circle in the middle of the monument where you can put a foot and a hand in each or the four states and pose for pictures. Some people from St. Louis, Missouri offered to take our picture so Pete stood in Arizona and Utah while I stood in New Mexico and Colorado.

Once we left the monument we travelled briefly through Colorado and were back on the roller coaster roads through open range land before we made another crossing into the fourth state of the quadrant, Utah (and our seventh of this trip). We passed through two small Utah towns, Blanding and Monticello, which had a decidedly neater, more affluent appearance than some of the small towns we had passed through in New Mexico.  We finally came to the town of Moab which seems to owe its existence as the service centre for Arches National Park, our ultimate destination. After passing a number of RV parks where campers were packed tight together in very unappealing surroundings I was happy that I had made the decision 6 months earlier to reserve a site at Devil’s Garden the only campground (and only 50 sites) in the park. Here our spacious site is nestled against the Navaho sandstone rocks with surrounding juniper bushes.