Day-by-Day Schedule

Click on the LOCATION link above for photos of these sites.

DAY 1. SATURDAY, SEPT 19. — ARRIVE ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO

Meet at Hotel Albuquerque near historic Old Town in Albuquerque by 6 pm for check in and Welcome Dinner and Orientation. Albuquerque was officially founded in 1706 on the northern frontier of New Spain, named in honor of the Viceroy, the Duke of Albuquerque.
Overnight: Hotel Albuquerque, Albuquerque, New Mexico (D)

DAY 2. SUNDAY, SEPT 20. — ALBUQUERQUE / ACOMA / GALLUP

Drive to historic Acoma Pueblo, 'Sky City' founded on a high rock mesa-top by ancestral Keresan speaking Puebloans before 1200 AD. Tour Sky City with Native Acoma tribal guides. Opportunity to see their traditional legendary hand built pottery paint with animal and geometric forms with yucca plant brushes. Lunch at Haaku Cultural Heritage Center and Museum. Drive to Gallup, a historic railroad town founded on the edge of the Navajo Nation. Overnight at Gallup. Dinner at Earls, where Navajo Indian arts and crafts artisans offer their traditional silver and turquoise jewelry. Navajos are an Apache people who migrated with other linguistic relatives from the far north in Canada into the Southwest of America within the last six hundred years. Our overnight lodge, El Rancho, is a famous Hollywood hotel housing stars of classic westerns of bygone years featuring rooms each named for a different star, such as Errol Flynn, John Wayne, & many others.
Overnight: El Rancho Gallup New Mexico (B, L, D)

Overnight in Salisbury.

DAY 3. MONDAY, SEPT 21. — GALLUP / WINDOW ROCK / GANADO / CHINLE, ARIZONA

Visit Richardson's Trading Post, a classic old Southwestern pawn shop, where traditional Navajo sheep and goat herders purchased supplies on credit and paid in wool and personal jewelry, which became a common practice in the late 19th and early 20th centuries before cash dollars became common. We'll see ceremonial deer hides, used in native rituals, saddles, turquoise and silver pawned to the trader in return for daily necessities for a century. This 3rd generation legendary trading post family also features an exquisite and beautiful collection of contemporary Navajo rugs, known the world over for their fine weaving and beautiful designs. Drive to Window Rock, Arizona, located in the stunning red rock country at the base of the Chuska Mountains. Enjoy a picnic Lunch at the Window Rock Tribal Park and Veteran's Memorial, at the base of a sacred 'eye' opening in the red rock to the turquoise blue sky above, a stunning photographic opportunity. Drive to Ganado, AZ. for a visit to Hubbell Trading Post, now maintained by the United States National Park Service as a national park monument and historic site of importance. Lorenzo Hubbell, the founder, was a member of a Spanish/Anglo family who in his prime operated more than a dozen trading posts scattered throughout the vast Navajo Reservation, and this was his home in the late 19th century. He was so admired as a friend, supporter, and advocate of the Navajo people after their round up by the US Cavalry and exile to a desolate military reservation, that he is buried near one of his Navajo friends, and a traditional leader, Mucho Ganado. Visit the National Park Service Visitor's Center, where master Navajo weavers regularly demonstrate weaving on the traditional upright looms as you watch. Tour the historic Hubbell Trading Post, and marvel at the traditional as well as contemporary arts represented. We will enjoy a Navajo rug talk and opportunity to appreciate different styles and regional rug designs in the famous Navajo rug room.

Drive to Chinle, Arizona, a Navajo town founded at the mouth of the spectacular Canyon de Chelly, which is where the Navajo learned to weave from Spider Woman, and also which served as a sanctuary for the Navajos as they avoided the U.S. Cavalry and attempted to hide in the deep red, black, and white canyons watered by the Chinle Wash. Centuries earlier, the fascinating Anasazi Puebloan cultures of ancient times built rock houses and communities in the sheer cliff walls long before Navajos migrated into the area. It is from the Navajo that the word Anasazi is uttered, enemy of our ancestors, a term popularized, but no longer considered culturally sensitive, for Ancestral Puebloans.
Overnight: Thunderbird Lodge, Chinle, Arizona (B, L,D)

DAY 4. TUESDAY, SEPT 22. — CHINLE / TSAILE / BLUFF, UTAH

Fascinating Truck Tour of Canyon de Chelly by Navajo guides, visiting and learning about cultural sites, stories, ancestral Puebloan houses, ceremonial structures (kivas), and spell binding ancient petroglyphs, or rock art which depict the various cultures who made this their home, including the Hopi.

Enjoy a traditional Navajo lunch in Canyon de Chelly. Meet Navajo arts and crafts vendors whose maternal farming and herding families still live seasonally in the canyon tending their flocks of sheep and goats. Learn about the Pueblo Indian ancestors' occupation of Canyon de Chelly in ancient times, the coming of the Navajo hunter-gatherers and Spanish conquerors, settlers, and friars. and finally, the United States' efforts to relocate the Navajos during the 1860's by the legendary Kit Carson, which resulted in the storied Navajo Long Walk to Bosque Redondo Reservation for a 3-year internment.

In the afternoon we will depart for Bluff, Utah via the north rim drive of Canyon de Chelly, with a spectacular walk to a scenic overlook across the famed red rocks, part of a great ancient inland sea which rose into the air and formed the Colorado Plateau, which covers parts of four American western states: Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah.

Drive to Bluff Utah, located on the scenic San Juan River, which flows out of volcanic mountains of southern Colorado and into New Mexico and Utah. Bluff is a historic late 19th century western American towns founded by Mormons but home in ancient times to ancestral Puebloans who built large complex communities here and left behind ruins, rock art, and pottery. Our lodge overlooks beautiful sandstone cliffs above the river, which is the lifeblood of the ancient Southwest America, where ancient cultures thrived and survived for many centuries and left an indelible cultural imprint before migrating away.
Overnight: Desert Rose, Bluff, Utah (B, L, D)

DAY 5. WEDNESDAY, SEPT 23. — BLUFF / MEXICAN HAT, UTAH

A memorable early morning float trip from Bluff to Mexican Hat, Utah, down the San Juan River. An opportunity to marvel at the incredible geology as well as cultural resources of the Colorado Plateau in the San Juan River Valley area and wildlife sightings, which often include egret, heron, hawks, Canadian geese, Rocky Mountain sheep and goats, and more. Wild Rivers Expeditions, our outfitter, is the renowned outdoor adventure company, which took Tony Hillerman down the San Juan River to see area first-hand, which he incorporated into his novel, Thief of Time. Our float down the San Juan River is a wonderfully relaxing and scenic boat trip full of stunning scenic waters as the multi-colored cliffs rise hundreds of feet above us and represent millions of years of visible history right before our eyes. Our river guide, trained in local knowledge and natural history, will share information on the stunning landscape and earth history, as well as spectacular ancient petroglyphs left by ancient peoples along the river.
Overnight: San Juan Inn, Mexican Hat, Utah (B, L, D)

DAY 6. THURSDAY, SEPT 24. — MEXICAN HAT / MONUMENT VALLEY / HOPI

Drive to Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. Tour Monument Valley with Navajo guides, featuring a picnic lunch in a beautiful setting and a visit to overlooks which capture the majestic monolithic forms of red sandstone in monumental sizes, all part of an ancient inland shallow sea in the middle of North America. At this time the Atlantic was not far to the east, and the Pacific not far to the west and strange ancient mountain ranges existed which sent rivers running north. Drive to the Hopi Indian Reservation, a Puebloan agricultural people who live on three semi-arid sacred mesas, the heart of the center of the world in Hopi traditional stories and history and practice dry farming of melons, maize, and beans. We will be honored with a late afternoon privately guided tour of Dawa Hopi Tribal Park on Third Mesa, an important place of clan petroglyphs carved on the sides of the rock canyon, leaving thousands of images over long periods of time. Journey on to Second Mesa. We will be staying at the Hopi Cultural Center for dinner and overnight, built in a pueblo style, and featuring both traditional Hopi and also American cuisine.
Overnight: Hopi Cultural Center, Hopi, Arizona (B, L, D)

DAY 7. FRIDAY, SEPT 25. — HOPI / ZUNI to SANTA FE

Visit a Hopi Trading Post and gallery, Tsakurshovi, operated by Joseph and Janice Day (she is a traditional Hopi). There we will see and learn about traditional Hopi Indian arts and crafts and spiritualism, including an understanding of the role of the spiritual katsinam, or intermediaries, who take on human form and are represented as carved wooden dolls with individualized masks for teaching purposes to young children. These wooden carved dolls, or kachinas, are known and collected throughout the world. Drive to First Mesa and take walking tour of Walpi, inhabited continuously for a millennium, located on a high defensible rock outcrop jutting hundreds of feet up, and home to many traditional artists and craftsmen of baskets and katsina dolls.

Drive to Zuni. Pueblo, a nation covering about one-half million acres and a population of about 10,000 Indian people. Zunians are Puebloan agricultural peoples, like many of their neighbors, but who speak an unrelated language not known to be related to any others yet found. This enigmatic people are renowned ceramic potters and intricate inlay jewelers. They are also known as stone carvers of animal fetishes used in hunting and ritual ceremonies for their spiritual power. They are also known for the remoteness of their villages and their resistance to European/American influence and control. The women are known for carrying large water vessels, or ollas, upon their heads, which is still done in ritual ceremonies and parades. We will meet and learn from a traditional Zuni artist about how spirituality, tradition, history, and clan are incorporated into all art forms.

Drive to Santa Fe for check-in at Hotel Santa Fe, the only native owned hotel in the capital city, which is currently commemorating its 400th anniversary as a Spanish town. Dinner in the hotel, which is home to noted Amaya Restaurant, featuring native cuisine. Overnight: Hotel Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico (B, L, D)

DAY 8. SATURDAY, SEPT 26. — SANTA FE

Walking tour of historic downtown Santa Fe with your Study Leader, a cultural historian, who will help you learn and appreciate why Santa Fe is one of the most desirable cities in the world to visit, at an elevation of 7,000 feet, and which maintains an architectural style which is home to more than 200 art galleries and an equal number of restaurants in a city of less than 100,000 people, including a significant minority (nearly 50%) of Hispanic descendants. Ancient Indians lived here throughout the last 12,000 years, followed by agricultural Pueblo peoples, who were conquered and converted by Spanish Roman Catholics, only to be invaded by Protestant Americans in the mid 19th century. Santa Feans have experienced 3 distinct nationalities (Spanish/Mexican/American) in less than 150 years! Contemporary Santa Fe is a feast of the senses and a visual and culinary delight. Lunch and afternoon to enjoy museums, galleries, open spaces, and renowned sacred spaces on your own. Farewell dinner at popular local restaurant.
Overnight: Hotel Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico (B, D)


DAY 9. SUNDAY, SEPT 27. — DEPARTURE

Transfer to Albuquerque International Sunport Airport via individual shuttles. (B)


Please note that B L D stands for (B - Breakfast, L - Lunch, D - Dinner) the meals that are included in the tour.

Please note that due to the magical and spontaneous nature of these trips the itinerary is subject to change, although all sites listed will be visited.



For more information:
Call (1) 505 559 4632 or (44) 020 8133 4994
email: annie.tm@greatmystery.org