Day 10 of our 2018 Jumbo Road Trip.
Albuquerque, NM to Kayenta, AZ. No geocaching today. The first half of our trip was on I-40, and although I had selected a few to look for we didn’t feel like it. The second half of the trip was through Indian Reservations and they do not allow the placement of caches on their lands.
The highlight of the today’s drive was a stop at the Canyon de Chelly National Monument. This place wasn’t on our radar and we wouldn’t have even driven by it (I had a different route planned) except for a random conversation with another traveling couple at lunch yesterday in Madrid. The woman running the Jezebel Soda Fountain said that if we had a chance while out this way we should visit the canyon.
Last night in the hotel room we looked up where it was and there it was, right on the other side of the Arizona border. So instead of cutting diagonally north west across New Mexico to get to Kayenta, we headed due west into Arizona and then north, which was only slightly longer and brought us right by Canyon de Chelly. All we had time for was a drive along one of the rims, we picked the south drive because it had more overlooks and were not disappointed.
Once again we have found a spot in the western part of the country that deserves a longer or second visit. Another one of those places is Arches National Park just north of Moab, UT. Guess where we are going to be driving right by tomorrow? Tomorrows route was specifically planed to be 100 miles less than the usual just so we can venture further into Arches than we did back in 2009.