We started day two from Williams, AZ at 7:00 am and headed north instead of east. Our plan for the day was to visit the Grand Canyon and Hopiland. Looking forward to going through the Navajo Nation and making a stop at Hopiland my sister asked, " Do they have a trading post we can stop at? Can we trade stuff?" I answered, "Yeah! We could trade our dollars for their stuff." My sister was full of questions this morning as we drove past the mesquite landscape of Arizona. My sister asked, "Are the Hopi an independent nation?" I hesitated to answer because the smile she was forming told me she knew the answer so I didn't want to be proved wrong. I eventually answered that the Hopi are a sovereign nation. Unsatisfied with my answer she asked, "What does that mean?" To this I quickly answered, "That they could operate casinos." Her smile burst into a laugh. She told me that she had asked me this question because President Bush had recently been asked what it meant when a Native American tribe claimed to be a sovereign nation. To this question President Bush answered in typical bushism that it meant that they are, mmm, sovereign. On May 11 2006 President Bush stated, "Tribal sovereignty means that, its sovereign. Your a... Your a... You been given sovereignty and your viewed as a sovereign entity. And therefore the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one betweens sovereign entities." WTF!
We arrived at the Grand Canyon before nine in the morning and before the tour busses. We made several stops along the Grand Canyon as we headed east on 180. We stopped at the Grandview at the Grand Canyon. Don't you think that they are hyping this a lot, the Grandview Point at the Grand Canyon? There was some great marketing involved in naming of a pile of dirt, I mean absence of a pile of dirt. I would have called it the Sosoview Point. The Grand Canyon is impressive for like five minutes, then you ask yourself "now what?" Well, we did the next logical thing start heading down to the canyon floor. We hike down for some time and said to ourselves, this is easy what is the big deal about hiking the trails at the Grand Canyon? Once we started to head back up we understood the big deal and why people train to hike rim to rim across the Grand Canyon.
Along the path to the visitor center in the Grand Canyon they have signs that read 'Don't feed the animals, let them feed themself.' I guess they where put up during the a Republican administrations!
My sister is going to law school and we were talking about her options once she is done. As part of one of her classes, she is teaching a class on the American constituion/civil liberties to a group of students in an inner city high school. On her future she said, "After this I could teach at a community college. I would be a JD, a doctor of law." I innocently asked, "Does this mean that you could operate on law? From what I understand is an ailing body of knowledge."
From the Grand Canyon we headed East to Tuba City to catch the 264 to Hopiland. To get to the Hopi reservation you have to pass Navajo territory. For miles along 264 we saw billboards that announced 'Friendly Indians Ahead.' As soon as we past this old dilapitated trading post a billboard read, 'Oops you missed us.' Driving along the Grand Canyon and through the Navajo Nation I felt like I was on a drive through geology class. You can see the erosion of wind and rain, the deforestation of the land, and the uplift of earth.
Move to Hopiland. You will save the world.
Once we hit the Hopi pueblo of Hotevilla we cruised around two looking for some place to stop. From Hotevilla we continue on 264 and made several stops along the road in Hopi territory. At the Hopi Cultural Center I bought two kachina dolls, one of Tewa the Sun God and the other of a mud head. After visiting the Hopi we headed back to the road and tried to get back to schedule. We wanted to reach Amarillo Texas by the end of the day but sun past noon and we were still in Arizona.
We drove through New Mexico like a tornado. In fact, in New Mexico dust devils and tornadoes have the right of way. Along Interstate 40 we saw a big rigs yield to a dust devil crossing the road. Which reminded me of the joke, why did the dust devil cross the road? The sun was going down once we hit ABQ, thats Albuquerque. The only thing I saw at ABQ was a what looked like a solar powered cactus along I-40.
We ended the day two of our trip to Raleigh, North Carolina in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. We traveled 591 miles this day on the hot landscape of the American Southwest.