I left Utah a couple of days ago. The night I got stuck in a wash I woke up with a bright moon shining in my face and couldn't get back to sleep. So off I went. Moab was a couple of hours away but when I got there the BLM had turned my little camping area in a fee area so off I went again in the middle of the night.
I found a spot in the Canyon Rims Recreation Area down towards Monticello. When I woke up in the morning everything was frozen solid and the forecast was for several more nights like that. So off I went again, heading south.
I got to Canyon de Chelly National Monument about noon. Actually I found the first of many overlooks into the canyon on UT-64 about noon. Massacre Canyon is where a bunch of Spanish soldiers killed a large number of Navajo Indians. They claim they were fire upon but the Navajos say all of the men were off hunting and there were just women, children and old men left. One woman grappled with a soldier on the canyon rim and fell off, pulling him with her. The Navajo now call that cliff Two-Who-Fell.
A lot of cliff dwellings can be seen from the overlooks. In one they found two well preserved mummies. The canyon itself is something else. Many hundreds of feet deep with lots of twists and bends. Really spectacular. Even more impressive to me was the beauty of the valley floor. 30 Navajo families live and farm in the 12 mile long canyon. The many cottonwoods were in their full fall colors and made a striking contrast to the green of the other vegetation and the red of the canyon walls.
I spent two hours between the north and south rims and took lots of pictures. The only way you're allowed into the canyon itself is with an authorized guide, probably to keep the dorks from poking around in people's homes. I didn't want to take the time then but may do it in the future. Lots of pictographs down there and other rock art.
I ended up driving a total of 13 hours that day before settling for the night outside of Tucson.