4 Corners

Monday, May 5, I left Silver City, New Mexico intending to skirt the eastern edge of Arizona and then head through Gallup, New Mexico to Durango, Colorado. I got sidetracked by Arizona…even just the northeast part of the state offered an incredible variety of terrain.

I crossed into Arizona just east of a little town called Alpine, and was surprised to see terrain that looked more like central Colorado than the famous desert landscapes I had seen photographs of. The mountains there were filled with tall green pines and the air was quite cool at 8000 feet elevation. Then just 20 or so miles north the landscape changed to golden grass covered treeless mountains near Springerville. As I was headed out of Springerville toward I-40 and then Gallup, New Mexico, I realized that Monument Valley was only an extra 100 miles out of my way (and when am I going to get to Arizona again?) so I decided to traverse the Navajo Nation to Monument Valley and then head up into southeast Utah before making it to southwest Colorado for the night.

Alpine, AZ

near Springerville, AZ

Painted Cliffs, AZ

Canyon de Chelly

Dusty roads west of Many Farms, AZ

Monument Valley

Monument Valley

San Juan River, Utah

Tomahawk Motel-Cortez, Colorado

One of the highlights of the drive was catching Navajo radio on AM 660. There was some Navajo rock and roll interspersed between Nashville hits, followed by an hour of local and national news in both English and Navajo. Check it out online here.