Cortez, Colorado.

It's Cinco de Mayo and Boy's Day, also Sensei's birthday.

There was Internet access at the hotel, but I restrained myself to checking my mail (not reading it all, just the family and Pagan email) and making sure I remembered why Piestewa Peak is named that. I would have been limited to a half-hour anyway. We looked at their "codetalker room" which honors the Navajo who helped with WWII.

I tried the phone, but there's no access. That's just great... across the Four Corners was the main reason I wanted to have the phone for emergencies.

My Mother used to speak with awe about Canyon de Chelly, back when it was nearly impossible to get to. Also, when we were in England, I took an archeology class and made a presentation about the prehistoric humans in America, and Canyon de Chelly came up. I have really wanted to see these ruins almost all my life.

Canyon de Chelly is a National Monument, but many of the ruins are only accessible with a Navajo guide. We decided to just do what we could from the car, which is to see the ruins from the rim and maybe take the hike to the White House (so-called because the plaster remains on the upper story.)

We spied a lizard at the Junction overlook. Then we stoked up with water and started down on the walk. It's about 2.5 miles round trip, with a 500' drop and there are spots where you're walking on the side of the cliff. It's been well-maintained, if you're careful. A couple of groups of schoolkids were coming up, hooray, so that maybe we could enjoy the sights in relative peace.

At the bottom is a Navajo farm, don't take pictures, but it was interesting to sneak peeks at the hogan and the woman, and the sheep. We trekked along Cottonwood Wash and then to the ruins. They are very impressive. These people are not the Hohokam or the Sinagua, but the Anasazi, which is Navajo for "Ancient enemy," now known as the Ancient Puebloan People. We do know what happened to them... we don't know why they moved, but we know that they became the Hopi and Zuni.

Rich talked to a couple of guys on the way down. When we were at the bottom, a busload of Indian children arrived. I thought they were there to learn some history but it turns out to be an end-of-school trip and they were there to let off some steam... they just start at the bottom and climb up. They splashed in the stream (oh, the laundry!) and took all sorts of short cuts. We talked to their teacher and found out they're from the Shiprock area. They get out of school in a week and start again in late July.

Puffing and panting on the way back up, I got into conversation with a Dutch couple. Rich enjoyed showing off his GPSr. And lo! A guy wearing last year's Bay to Breakers shirt came by, so we had a little conversation!

At the top I spied a kiva in another cave nearby and saw someone trek up the side to peer into it. Then we drove from site to site along the rim, and when we got to the end we got a virtual cache. We went back to the visitor's center where we had lunch, and then we went out to the north. There's one rock formation that looks like Kilroy was there. We left at 4, our time, and headed up to the Four Corners. We saw wild horses, a coyote, and some magnificent formations. We won't be doing Monument Valley this time, but we've seen plenty. Four Corners was closed, so we went on into Cortez, which turns out to be a pretty sizeable town.

High Point: Making it to the top after seeing the White House

Lowspot: Missed a cache yesterday. I looked at my notebook and had one down we could have picked up on the way to Chinle. Oh, well.