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Santa Fe Archaeological Society Spring Adventure - 2010
Canyon de Chelly and Homolovi –A Spring trip filled with possibilities
May 14 8:30A Friday Depart Santa Fe (from the corner of Sandoval and Water Street)
- Visit to Acoma Pueblo’s new Sky City Cultural Center and Haak’u Museum. We will not tour the mesa, but after the museum it’ll be good opportunity to have your lunch. There is a restaurant at the Center if you have not brought your own brown bag lunch.
- Continue westward into Arizona and north onto the Navajo Reservation to Chinle and Canyon De Chelly.
- We’ll drive along the ridge of the Canyon to see it from that perspective, looking down to see the Canyon’s soaring rock faced walls, some Anasazi ruins, and historic Navajo sites. It is still home to some 80 families who farm and raise their animals.
- Check-in to Thunderbird Lodge located at the entrance to the Canyon.
- Welcome Cocktail Party before dinner on your own at Lodge
May 15 Full day jeep Tour into Canyon departs from Thunderbird Lodge departing at 9:00 AM Saturday to take visitors into lower halves of Canyon del Muerto to Mummy Cave and to Canyon de Chelly and Spider Rock. It was in Canyon de Chelly where in 1864 Kit Carson led his cavalry to defeat the Navajo and then force them on the “Long Walk” to Fort Sumner, NM where they were interned for four years.
- Tour includes lunch.
- (As an alternative for those who have done this full jeep tour, there will the possibility to experience the Canyon–by horseback. This tour will not cover the as much distance or as many sites. Return to the Lodge well satiated. Perhaps a little tired. Perhaps a little bow-legged.
- Dinner on your own.
May 16 8:30 AM Sunday. Depart Lodge for a stop at Hubbell Trading Post, the oldest continually operated Trading Post in the Southwest. Wander through the grounds of the Hubbell Family farmstead. There will be a tour of the historical family home,
- A stop at Rock Canyon Ranch outside of Winslow. Private ranching land, we will hike into to Chevelon Canyon where, covering the sandstone walls, there are hundreds of Petroglyphs, created over hundreds of years by the Anasazi, Sinagua, Hopi, Navajo and Zuni.
- Picnic Lunch
- On to Homolovi Ruins State Park – situated on flood plains of the Little Colorado River the Hopi consider the area to be a part of their Homeland. The park serves as a research center for the late migration of the Hopi from 1200 to late1300’s. “Homolovi” is Hopi for “Place of Little Hills” –the traditional name for Winslow, AZ.
- 5:00 PM Final destination for the evening is historic La Posada Hotel in Winslow, “the last great railroad hotel”. The architecture, every detail of the hotel including furniture and the dinner china was designed by Mary Colter for Fred Harvey. At your leisure explore the hotel, the grounds, the railroad platform. On your own enjoy a good dinner in the hotel’s dinning room.
May 17 Monday - Depart Winslow – with the possibility of catching the Southwest Chief, the train that stops at the hotel to return you to Santa Fe.
(Amtrak scheduled departure from Winslow is 7:09AM; arrives Lamy 2PM.)
- Bus departs 8:00AM
- Visit to El Morro National Monument with its 200 foot high Inscription Rock where centuries old petroglyphs have been carved. Juan de Onate and Don Diego DeVargas added their names as well as many other conquistadors and settlers. On top of the bluff is evidence of ancient Anasazi ruins.
- A stop in Grants for late lunch.
- And then a nap for the return journey to Santa Fe
- Arrive 5:00 PM
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