Today is filled with driving Tours. This morning, our group will self drive the north canyon rim. Our first stop is the Antelope House and Fortress Houses overlook.
Looking down into the canyon at the base of the cliff old foundations from the Antelope House can be seen
Fortress rock is the second overlook at this stop. The valley is amazing.
We load back in the cars and go to the next overlook, which is known as Mummy Cave. We once again see the remnants of some structures at the base of the cliff face
Further down the canyon, we can see what looks like a Homestead with the house and Animal pen in the center of the valley
At massacre overlook, we can look out over the valley. There is a portion of a wall with dugout caves, and you can see man-made walls inside where people had inhabited.
Following the north rim, we traveled back to the south rim to look at some of the overlook we bypassed yesterday
Our next activity is a guided tour of the canyon floor. We all loaded up in a truck that holds six people per side our guide informs us. This canyon is the second largest canyon in the United States.
Manganese is the mineral that stains the rock walls black. The red is created from iron oxidation. Up on the rock wall is natural, manganese, staining, and almost looks as if it is Egyptian art, a woman walking out of the canyon.
The cottonwood trees in the canyon were actually introduced by environmentalists in the 30’s to do erosion control. They sense have taken over many parts of the canyon and become invasive.
On the opposite wall of the canyon is a small cave that has lots of ancient handprints. Handprints often indicate burial sites.
Our Navajo guide Richard has much to share at each of our stops
Another rock wall with the canyon varnish has two drawings one of a man resembling a turtle in the lower left corner. The upper right corner is a bird.
There is a hoodoo that likes like ET from the movie of the same name.
We continued down the canyon looking at many different rock formations. We often stop and look at more pictographs.
We’ve come to our first set of architectural buildings set within the canyon wall. Our guy tells us that when he’s war constructed the valley floor was most likely closer to the level of the buildings. The walls around the buildings have pictographs as well
We continue down, passing more amazing rock, formations, and additional architectural building sites
Although hard to see how enormous it is, we stopped in a concave section of the cliff wall and took a picture of the truck. It is amazing how small we are compared to nature.
Our guy continues to point out more pictrographs on the canon walls.
On our drive over the north rim this morning we stopped at the antelope house and Fortress rock lookouts. We now are on the canyon floor at the antelope house where we had some fry bread and looked at some more pictrographs on the wall.
Wolf rock is cool
Sitting next to cat rock, I can imagine how a mouse feels
Dori, one of our group members was very excited to see the pictograph of Spanish conquistadors. We learned that it was too far in the canyon to do on our tour, but our tour guide contacted the owner and told them that we had hoped to see it, she offered to extend our trip by an hour For less than $10 a person. It was a great deal and we accepted.
I continue to Marvel at the canyon walls. It shapes colors and size are amazing.
The white object on top of the rock is actually a person standing at one of the overlooks high above
This architectural site is called the White House. The lower structure at one point was four stories high and reached to the bottom of the cave opening. The white structure sits in.
The sun begins to cast a very orange glow across many of the rock faces as it begins to set
As we leave the canyon, we have a beautiful colors forming, from the sunset, in the wispy clouds
Today’s video is not the best truck bounced around a lot, and I didn’t do much video in it. I was afraid of dropping my phone.
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