Camping and Hiking at Navajo National Monument

With our after-church hike on Sunday afternoon, we did something that we almost never do--we arrived at our next camp site after dark. This was scary since it is a first-come-first-served campground. This was particularly scary because they advertise this as a 28-foot maximum place, and our motor home is 35 feet long. But we read that longer RVs will fit, and we had a back-up plan if it was full and/or we were too long.

We are glad to report that we found a great site open, and we shoe-horned the motor home between two pinion pine trees. We even had room to park the car beside it. We got the motor home parked because of Mark's masterful backing skills. Denisa found out that the reverse lights on the motor home are at eye level, and are blinding in the dark. So she was literally blindly directing Mark into this tight spot. This was a good reminder not to arrive after dark any more.

This campground is at the Navajo National Monument, and it's free! There are no hook-ups, but we've never seen a free campground at a national park. We're certainly glad our motor home fit. This place must be in some international tour book, because we met campers from all over the world here. We met a young couple from France, a family from Denmark, a French-speaking couple from Quebec, and two different couples from Germany. We keep seeing that international travelers make better use of our national parks and monuments than American citizens.

Besides camping, the main reason we are at the Navajo National Monument is to take the hike into the canyon. The picture above was taken from the canyon rim viewpoint, looking down into a special alcove far below. The only way to get there is on a ranger-led hike, and so we made reservations to go down the next morning.

Mark kept taking pictures of the continuous steps as we made our way 600 feet down to the canyon floor.

All along the way, our Navajo ranger told us stories about the plants we were seeing, and how his ancestors used them.  For example, the juniper berries have a seed inside. With the outer blue covering removed, these little brown seeds are called ghost beads. He proudly showed the necklace of juniper beads he wears to chase away evil spirits.

We also talked about the pinion pine trees that are having a bumper harvest right now. We saw cars parked beside the highway, and found out they were picking the prized pinion nuts. We had pinion nuts all over our campsite because the pine cones are just now opening.

The little white pine nuts are actually inside a brown hard shell. The Navajo roast and salt them, and eat them much like sunflower seeds.

The other option is to sell them, and there were several vehicles along the highway with signs offering to buy pinions. We heard the going rate for nuts in the shell was $12-15 per pound, and it looks like a rather tedious process to gather them. So the next time Denisa sees shelled pine nuts at the grocery store, she won't complain so much about the price.

Back to the trail, we are now hiking through forests of oak and aspen on the canyon floor.

Our ranger explained that this canyon is much like an upside-down mountain. Because it is so narrow and deep, sunlight only gets to the canyon floor for a few hours in the middle of the day. Because it is cool down here, plants usually found at much higher elevation on a mountain actually thrive inside the canyon. You don't usually see aspen in the Arizona desert.

After two hours, we finally made it to our destination--Betatakin. It's hard to get a sense of scale, but let's just say that's a huge sandstone alcove we're looking at from a distance.

If we get a little closer, we can look at just half of the alcove at a time. Now we can see that there seems to be some little brown boxes in the bottom center of the picture.

Those little brown boxes are actually rooms and homes where over 100 ancestral Indian families once lived in this canyon.

Considering that they were built in the 1200's, the pueblos are in remarkable shape. Some restoration has been done, and some ladders have been replaced, but the ancient village of Betatakin has some of the best preserved pueblo dwellings in the United States.

There are 143 different rooms and graneries. Looking at how they are stacked together, you can almost get a sense of the day-to-day life of these early apartment dwellers.

The land in front of the alcove opening was probably planted with crops like corn and squash by these early farmers 800 years ago. But today the grove of fall-colored trees made a beautiful valley for a front yard view.

Six years ago, the tour took hikers right into the pueblo village. But today this was as close as we got.

There are lots of mysteries about the people that once lived here. Our ranger told us some opinions, but there is no written history of the ancestral puebloans. They did leave behind pictures on the rock walls near the living quarters. It is believed that they were members of the deer and fire clan, as well as the flute and water clan symbols that were drawn on another wall.

Our Navajo guide gave us lots of history and information about his tribe. Then he let us ask questions. It was nice to talk about old and  present-day practices within their tribe. For example, he told us that they don't call themselves Navajo--they prefer to be called Dine'. Our new information makes driving through this very large Navajo reservation (that encompasses most of northeast Arizona) much more interesting. After almost three hours of hiking and talking, we were free to make our way back to the visitor's center at our own pace. We could stop and enjoy the red canyon walls and the yellow aspen leaves.

We were led through the forest by this little bird. She certainly liked to pose for pictures, so we have to include her as our only wildlife sighting of the day.

We mentioned all the steps coming down into the canyon. Well, we found out they have tripled as we were hiking back up. Some times it was just a good thing to sit down and enjoy all those fall leaves that are covering the steps.

The good news is that the narrow canyon doesn't allow sunlight in most of the day, so we made the uphill journey mostly in the shade.

This time of year there is only one ranger-led tour down into the canyon per day. At the top of the canyon there was a sign and a blockade on the path to keep other visitors out. But half-way down the canyon there is a locked gate. They are serious about protecting these well-preserved pueblos from unsupervised visitors!

The colors looking down into the canyon were very fall-like with the orange walls and the yellow leaves. Denisa had asked the ranger how many steps it took to get up and down this hike, and he didn't know. Denisa counted every one of the 844 steps from the canyon floor to the visitor's center.

We were the first to make it out of the canyon, and we were ready for a little rest back at the motor home in the campground. But that evening we had enough energy to hike on some of the other trails here at Navajo National Monument.

This stop wasn't on our radar, but we have never been disappointed with a national park or national monument. As we watched sundown from the campground we are loving our camp site here. We would certainly recommend the camping and the hiking at this less-known monument in the middle of Arizona's Navajo reservation.