The next question was, are we going south or east? To Sedona or Monument Valley? We could only choose one direction this trip, and actually, this was an easy decision. I'd wanted to see Monument Valley for as long as I could remember. Eastward Ho it was. Maybe next time for Sedona, Phoenix and beyond.

Another good thing about going this way was we could swing by Canyon de Chelly. But first we travelled though many miles of Navajo and Hopi Reservation country. Beautiful but very desolate, dusty orange country. The Navajo own the whole northeastern corner of Arizona into southern Utah — including Canyon de Chelly and Monument Valley. Not a bad chunk of real estate.

Canyon de Chelly (pronounced d'shay) is really many canyons with walls that run from 30 feet to 1000 feet up from the floor. This was such an unusual place! Not only because of the dramatic geography, there was also an amazing human history in the Canyon. For 5000 years people lived in these canyons and the archeological remains can be seen all over the walls. There are drawings etched or painted that tell the stories of the ancient people. But the neatest, most incredible sights were of the dwellings and compounds built — actually, carved — into the canyon walls — some of them hundreds of feet above the floor. These were homes and fortresses of Puebloan people many centuries ago.

Today, many Navajo still live in and around the Canyon. There were several farms and ranches on the canyon floor. To tour the canyon itself you need a Navajo guide — unfortunately, we didn't have time to do that. But we drove along both rims — there are two main "forks" to the canyon, both overlooking different areas. The south rim was 18 miles long, the north rim 17 — but that's only the length of the road that runs along it, not the actual canyon size.

The overlooks are beautiful, one was very different from another. It was pretty amazing to see the combination of what nature and man created here. Probably the most dramatic sight was Spider Rock, an 800-foot-high sandstone spire that jutted skyward from the floor of the canyon.

There was such a nice feel to this area, it was very calming, almost spiritual. As the late afternoon sun cast long shadows across the canyon, this was a welcome, restful place and time.

As we left the Canyon area, the scenery remained beautiful. We would go north, then back west a bit. When you look at road maps of the Southwest, you wonder why there are so few roads, and why they seem to go in such strange, out-of-the-way directions. Then you're there. And it all becomes very clear. And worth every extra mile you must travel to maneuver around mountains, canyons, cliffs, rivers, buttes, ledges ...