Thunderbird Lodge Canyon Floor Tour

Saturday 9/28/2019

Today we took the Thunderbird Lodge tour of the Canyon De Chelly floor. I tell you that the ride was worth the price and the views from the floor were fantastic. Fernando told us there were over 2500 ruins sites in the canyon complex. As you will see we saw several of the.
The floor of the canyon is quick sand and since it had rained a couple of days ago the sand was very soft and rutted. A guided tour is the only way you can access the floor of the canyon. The tour was 4 hours long with 2 stretch/bio breaks.

Start with our campsite.

Sleeping Duck

First Ruin

Can you find the trail (hint the big log)

Junction Ruin

Can you finds the trail?

Pretty View

Antelope House

Hernando’s trail he does with his children

White House Ruin (note in the last photo the lower part used to be up to the upper part)

Who are these folks?

Poison Rock (because if it falls on you, you are dead)

Hernando and our ride

Canyon De Chelly North Rim

09/27/2019

After a wonderful night sleep with the windows all open a little night chill it was time for the North Rim tour. I should mention the south rim is best visited in the afternoon and the north in the morning.

First stop was Antelope House Overlook.

Second stop Navajo Fortress Viewpoint

Third stop Mummy Cave Overlook

Forth Stop Massacre Cave Overlook and Yucca Cave Viewpoint

Got back to the trailer to find that the Solar panels had fully recharged the batteries. Also found that the panels would provide enough to allow the use of the inverter to run the laptop without using any capacity from the batteries. Glad to report the Battle Born battery upgrade with the solar panels are working great. Glad I did the upgrade,

Canyon De Chelly South Rim

Today was a short day of only 200 miles to Canyon De Chelly. Good roads and pleasant scenery as follows.

Arrived at the visitor center before lunch to check thing out.

Then we were of to Spider Rock Campground where Sue had made a reservation because the had WIFI. Boy was that a mistake If it had rained we would have been stuck until it dried out. We should have taken pictures but did not. To say the least we turned around an went back to the Cottonwood campground. Much better level paved sites with good access roads.

We had just got parked when Airstreams started coming in. It turned out the South West Carivan was just arriving with 31 units. Parking next to us was Mona and Tim. Tim and I worked parking for Alumapalozza last year. Mona is the new WBAC president which we have met on several other occasions. It is a small world.

After lunch we set out to explore the South Rim. The first stop was Spider Rock Overlook.

Pano of Spider Rock













Junction of Canyon De Chelly and Moument Canyon.

Next up was Face Rock Overlook and Sliping House Overlook

Last stop was Whitehouse Overlook

Dinner of burgers and a walk of the campground finished off the day.