Canyon de Chelly National Monument: The view from above: The rim drives
Each of the two "rim drives" from the visitor center offers a succession of spectacular overlooks; allow two to three hours for each of the forty-mile round-trips. Thefts from cars have been a major problem, so it's wise to heed the prominent warnings.The first significant stopping point along the South Rim Drive is Junction Overlook , after four miles, far above the point where the two main canyons branch their separate ways; as you scramble across the bare rocks you can see Canyon de Chelly narrowing away, with a hogan immediately below. Two miles further along, by which time the canyon is 550ft deep, White House Overlook looks down on the highly photogenic White House Ruins . This is the only point from which unguided hikers can descend to the canyon floor, taking perhaps 30 to 45 minutes to get down and a good hour to get back up. The beautiful if precarious trail, at times running along ledges chiseled into the slick rock, culminates with a close-up view of the ruins; the most dramatic dwellings, squeezed into a tiny alcove sixty feet up a majestic cliff, were once reached via the rooftops of now-vanished structures. Visitors are forbidden to walk for more than a hundred yards in either direction beyond the site. Back up on the South Rim Drive, twelve miles along, the view from Sliding House Overlook reveals more Ancestral Puebloan ruins seemingly slipping down the canyon walls toward the ploughed Navajo fields below, while eight miles further on the road ends above the astonishing Spider Rock , where twin 800ft pinnacles of rock reach to within 200ft of the canyon rim.
The North Rim Drive runs twenty miles up Canyon del Muerto to Massacre Cave , where the Spanish expedition of 1805, led by Lieutenant Narbona, killed around one hundred Navajo women, children and old men. The "cave" is just a pitifully exposed ledge, upon which the huddled group were easily picked off by the Spanish, using ricochets off the overhang above. Visible from the nearby Mummy Cave Overlook is the House Under The Rock , with its central tower in the Mesa Verde style - the single most striking ruin in the monument. Of the two viewpoints at Antelope House Overlook , one is opposite Navajo Fortress, an isolated eminence atop which the Navajo were besieged for three months in 1863, while the other looks down on the ruins of Antelope House, and the Tomb of the Weaver across the wash, where the embalmed body of an old man was found wrapped in golden eagle feathers.
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