Day 15: Window Rock to Kayenta

Up and breakfast.  Everyone in the hotel breakfast room was a Native American bar us.  Fed and Coffee'd we headed a mile or so up the road to see the Window Rock after which the town was named.

At its base was the  Navajo Code Talkers Statue.  The Code Talkers where Navajo Marines, whose language was used as a unique and cryptic tactical communications code in battle.

Into Ganado, and into the Hubbell Trading Post.  You can things from a tin of spam to a $450 Navajo Rug.  We bought a small pot of ointment good for aches and paints which we'll rub on Jane's elbow.

Onto I-95 North towards Kayenta.  We could see Monument Valley in the distance.  Then there was the great plan to travel thirty miles West to go and a town called Pinon.  We'd seen Pinon Coffee advertised in a few places, but didn't know anything about the town.  To be honest the fact that every single sign on the way was covered in so much graffiti that you couldn't read it should have been a warning.  We ploughed on.  Getting there we pulled into the parking lot, looking around - looked at each other - turned the car around and started to make the thirty mile journey back to where we'd come from.

We got to our hotel which is about twenty miles from Monument Valley which we'll hit first thing tomorrow.

Day 7: Monticello to Durango (Colorado)

It was nice having a house after some hotels so we made the most of it and hung around until 11 am.  The next hotel was in Durango (Colorado) and was only two hours away with a check-in time of 3 pm so we had a few hours to kill.

First port of call was the Stateline Bar & Grill just over the border into Colorado in a town called Dove Creek.  You're probably thinking; "Dove Creek - Why does that ring a bell?"  Well, it's the self-proclaimed Pinto Bean Capital of the World.  That's probably it.

Driving out of Dove Creek we hung a quick right when we saw a town called Yellow Jacket.  Nothing but a post office (which opened in 1915).  A population of zero I suspect.  The name, I later learnt, came from the abundance of yellow jackets (a type of wasp) near the original site of the town.

A quick walk around the Narraguinnep Reservoir and the back in the car to the Anasazi Heritage Center.  The centre is an archaeological museum of Native American pueblo and hunter-gatherer cultures.

Around the side of the centre you can work your way up the hill and from the top you can see McPhee Reservoir.  When the reservoir was constructed it covered the original resting place of the artefacts now found in the museum.

On to the hotel in Durango.  It's full and proper name is the Free and Sovereign State of Durango.  Wikipedia says it's called both "the land of the scorpions" and as "the land of cinema".  I'm pretty sure Hollywood is the land of cinema, but hey - what do I know?

The major occupations in Durango are farming, logging, mining, and ranching.

All very interesting I know.