Navajo Nation

 

Northern

Arizona

 

Elevation: 6800 Feet

 

 

 

 

This is a desolate land of vast expanses of loneliness, hard-ship and taco shack jewelry stands hawking "authentic Indian jewelry."  Every movie you have ever seen showing the blowing dust, tarped shacks with rotted and blasted wood is completely true. 

The people looked sad, like zoo lions; miserable, drugged and tired of being looked at.  I felt bad stopping at one of them to stretch my legs.  The authentic indians were speaking fluent spanish and threading beads on fishing wire. 

The land looked hard, and the people harder, with equal cracks and deep fissures in rock and face.  You could go on for miles with nothing, and then off on some distant dirt road you could see the tin shimmer of a mobile home parked, lonely and miserable, looking to dig in and find some of its own shade.

You still can't help but stare at the landscape as it goes on and on, with its sweeping shades of red and amazing bands of color.  It seemed like a Tibetin sandscape with bands of differing strokes of sand and rock. 

We pulled into a town that lay atop the land as if it were on a board game that you could fold up and carry away with you.  Tanis was getting hungry and restless after being in the car for two days. 

We stopped at a local McDonald's for nothing except the playground.  He took us on a nice trip through the playground a few times.  I despise how the fast food chains market their shitty food towards kids promising a $.05 toy, paper sack with games so insipid as to induce

We pulled through northern Arizona and slipped north back up into Utah to see Zion.  It was in the late afternoon, and the backdoor into Zion is completely worth the trip.