Canyon De CHILLY

We're at a Navajo campground at Canyon DeChelly, which has wifi, so I'm sitting in the little camp office trying to get the blog squared away and updated, and check email, etc. while the rest of the family sleeps. If you look through our previous posts, you may notice I added a picture or two, and finished the tale of the sand dunes hike.
We were at Mesa Verde the last two nights, and we had to laugh, because once again, just as we pulled into camp, it rained, and this morning, as we packed up, it started raining again! So today as we drove here, we just navigated by driving toward the darkest clouds on the horizon, and got here without missing a turn!
Can't complain, though, because we got a nice hike in this afternoon, with only a few sprinkles. No pics downloaded yet of DeChelly, but I sure took a few!

Speaking of weather, we are getting some classic desert climate; warm days but CHILLY nights. For example, our first morning waking up at Mesa Verde looked like this:>





But we had a great day, and had the good fortune to get as our Ranger guide for the Cliff Palace, one Mark Andrews, who had a breadth of knowledge that was remarkable, a wry sense of humor that was spot-on, and an easygoing, self effacing manner that made him easily approachable. When we heard that he is retiring in two weeks, we felt extraordinarily lucky. We knew we were in the presence of greatness, that not many more people will get to experience, at least in that capacity. I will end this post wishing him a happy, adventurous retirement.