A grand Thanksgiving adventure with the Sorensens! We drove up to Chambers on Wednesday and stayed the night at a Days Inn in Chambers AZ. On Thanksgiving morning we drove up to Canyon de Chelly and took the scenic drives around the rims of the canyon and hiked down to the White House ruins. That's the only hike that can be done without a local Navajo guide.

The canyon is inside the Navajo Nation which is a large area in the North Eastern corner of AZ. There's a lot of ruins build by ancient Navajo indians. Most of the ruins are built in crevasses in the vertical sides of the canyon. Very impressive.

We had a turkey Thanksgiving dinner at the Thunderbird Lodge Cafeteria.

Friday morning we hired a local Navajo guide to take us into the canyon. We met up with Kenny in the morning and he took us along the sandy bottom of the canyon in his 4 wheel drive suburban. Only 4 wheel drives will be able to go there. There are lots of places to get stuck, even in a 4 wheel drive. Halfway into the valley we stopped to go on a challenging hike up some very steep canyon walls. I got a little uneasy about being in a position where there was a vertical wall on one side and certain death on the other only separated by a narrow ledge. We all made it back down safely.

Dinner consisted of Navajo Tacos, which is an Indian Fried Bread topped with a mountain of pinto beans. The effects of eating a ton of beans for dinner makes for a very toxic and stinky gas expulsion throughout the night. I was barely consious when it was time to wake up.