{ I *Heart* Hatch Chiles }

{ Canyon de Chelly }

We started off our day at the historic Hubble Trading Post in Ganado. We did the tour, which we've never done before. It was fascinating to go through the beautiful old house. The Dine tour guide told us the Hubble girls were bad to hang the baskets from the ceiling. Mr. Hubble was not happy when he came home that day. No basket should ever be used for decoration or placed upside down, ie, spilling out. The baskets are reserved for ceremonial use.

These bricks were used to make the outdoor oven.

The hogan is used now for visiting artists. When they stay, they donate an art piece to the Hubble. Almost every Navajo, or Dine as they prefer to be called, on the reservation has a hogan. It's a place used for ceremonies, but in the meantime is often occupied by the family or the parents.

We arrived next at Canyon de Chelly. The first lookout we stopped at was Spider Rock. These are the rocks that are in so many Native American's stories. How interesting to see the actual place.

The kids loved climbing on all of the rocks and boulders.

Our favorite part of the trip to Canyon de Chelly was the 2.5 mile round trip hike to the White House on the canyon floor, nestled up against a cliff face. It's the only trail hikers are allowed to hike on without a guide. It was a beautiful hike, and going down the switch backs didn't hurt my knees at all!

Our modern day pictographs.

Read the sign. It was a beautiful view, but my stomach dropped every time one of the kids leaned over the wall.

More ruins at the bottom of the canyon.

The End.

{ Chaco Canyon }

We headed out to New Mexico for the three day weekend in search of good food, excercise, beauty and a learning experience. We stuck to the Navajo Nation as our area of exploration. After stopping in Gallup and getting 30 pounds of hot Hatch chiles, we went to Chaco Canyon to look at the ruins and later, listen to the astronomy presentation by the resident ranger. First, pueblo bonito, a very large ruin that housed hundreds of people long ago.

On a cliff above we saw ancient petroglyphs. These are the pictures that were carved into the rock by the ancient people who lived here.

My son found an interesting sign. Of course, this was made very recently, as it was only scratched in the dirt.

We also found a lot of fossils embedded in the cliffs surrounding the pueblos. I wonder if the ancients noticed that there were seashells in the walls of the canyon?

My daughter found a pottery shard. We took a picture and then placed it back where we found it.

Finally, the sun went down, and we headed to the observatory by the visitor center to hear an enthralling talk about astronomy in the ancient times. The pueblo people who lived here before had special sun and moon watchers. These people used the stars, sun and moon to predict the seasons and tell the people when to plant crops and get begin to prepare for winter. It was an important job, a matter of life and death. After the talk we got to look through the three telescopes set up outside and the observatory telescope. We saw Venus, a distant galaxy, and a solar system with a dying star that night.