I  love this photo - can't do it justice this size on the blog. This is just inside Arizona.

This fellow was on our little patio today heading towards Roxie's food. Tom smushed him.

We are traveling every weekend and then I am working my self hard at school during the week. Last weekend we drove up to Four Corners and Shiprock. Ship Rock Peak was fascinating - we drove all the way around it. I believe it is over 1700 feet high just jutting out from the ground - a sacred rock to the Navajo.

Four Corners was nice, not too many folks and I found a really pretty Navajo horsehair pot that I liked and bought. Tom got an arrow to hang over the door for good luck.

Roxie goes with us on these trips - she loves the wildlife. We see loads of sheep, horses, cattle, Roadrunners. Saw some huge long horn steers the other day. Tom has seen coyotes several times - I can't see them fast enough. Still, my favorites are the Prairie Dogs.

This guy didn't even look up at us. Roxie of course was behaving very badly - trying to go through the window.

This past weekend we traveled to Canyon De Chelly National Monument near Chinle Arizona. There were 1000 year old dwellings built into the rock. You can barely see them in the photos - these rock canyons are huge.

Some Navajo still farm in the valley and I hope you can see the fields. We take Roxie everywhere of course - she and Tom cannot bear to be separated. We got out at one of the overlooks and walked down to the edge where there was a wall there to keep you from falling over and Roxie just jumped right up on top of that thing. The drop off on the other side was straight down - way down. Tom barely pulled her back in time. You can believe we held her tight after that.

You can barely see the houses in the cliffs. They were amazing, over 1000 years old.

Spiderwoman peak - she takes bad children to the top. I think I'd like to go.

Right snack dab in the center of this photo are the cliff dwellings.

I thnk if we ever go back to Canyon De Chelly again, we will take the four wheel drive tour at the bottom of the canyon. We would get to see the rock art and the houses up close. There is only so much time...

We also visited the Hubble Trading Post in Granado and dropped by Window Rock - which was out favorite stop of the day. There was a nice memorial to the Navajo Veterans.

I love this photo of Tom and this beautiful tree with the Window Rock in the back.

Yes, I have lost a little weight. The lap band is a wonderful thing.

Hubbel Trading post - very old place. They have $10,000 Navajo blankets in here!

If you look closely you can see Roxie in the truck.

This photo was taken late in the afternoon – a family was out herding the cattle to another area – by horse and 4-wheeler.

Grass is growing in our yard. It is lovely and hopefully will keep the Roxie mudtracks down to a minimum.

Yesterday we traveled to El Morro, a huge rock formation with a pool of water at it’s base. Used to take 9 or 10 days for the explorers and early settlers to travel from Albuquerque to Gallup and this was a stop because it had this great water. Some early explorers carved inscriptions on the rocks and of course they are still there. We enjoyed reading about the inscriptors!

Later we traveled over to El Malpais with I believe means bad country. Well it was certainly beautiful country. There is a huge valley covered in black lava  just huge. There were as many as 30 volcanoes in the area and the lava flowed to the same valley. We took about three hikes (could not have done that before my weight loss) and enjoyed climbing on some high cliffs – you could actually drive right to the top of them. There were also some lava tubes, some collapsed and some not – but we needed a 4-wheel drive vehicle with high clearance to get there. Maybe later.

We felt very alone in El Malpais – saw no more than 10 folks in the entire park. We did pass maybe 20 cars on the road. Seemed to be a really remote area.

I am posting a few photos. 

The tall rock formations of El Morro.

El Malpais - on the top of the rocks. I was almost dizzy.

I aksed Tom to hold tight to Roxy - cause it was a long way down.

Here's me and Tom. That is the lava field in the valley behind us.

This is La Ventura Natural Arch - eroded from sandstsone from the era of dinosaurs

We had a really great thunderstorm and downpour today. The weather has really been so cool and clear the last few weeks - so different from when we arrived.

Yesterday we drove over to the Painted Desert and the Petrified Forest - took about 90 minutes to get over there. Tom had never been to the area so he was quite taken with everything, had to stop at every place. We even took one of the hikes, and I could not have done that without my weight loss. I am right at 70 pounds. We drove to Winslow, Arizona afterwards and stopped at the "Standin' on the corner" corner that the Eagles made famous. Then we drove another 20 miles to see a Meteor Crater and it was fabulous. Tom had been there when he and his brother were in their 20's and there was nothing there but a little frame place. They actually climbed all the way down and then back up - which is quite a distance. But they were young...

Here are some photos.

It just goes on forever. 

This is Tom's first view of a petrified rock.

There's lot of dinosaus statues around. Roxie thought some were real.

The Wigwam Hotel

I felt like the wind was going to blow me over. It was very strong.

Tom was amazed at the vistitor center. Movies, gift shop, displays, Subway, elevators, well it was

 pretty different from when he was there 40 years ago.

We had a fire drill at school today and the Zuni fire department actually sent a firetruck out to participate in the drill. They always do.

When Tom drives me to school every day, as we turn the corner into the school property Roxie just goes nuts cause she is about to see all the stray dogs that one of our teachers feed each morning and she is also about to see the little prairie dogs.

We have met more and more of our teacher neighbors here. Not too many inbetweens - mainly younger teachers or people with lots of experience like me. Like Chevak, these folks are from all over the US.

Tom is cafefuly tending to our grass - he and Roxie keep it watered and go out to check several times a day to see in any grass is coming up.