Chimney Rock is a national monument that was home to the Ancestral Puebloans of the Chaco Canyon. We've ridden past Chimney Rock a few times on previous motorcycle trips, and one day we plan to stop and hike in this area.
Continuing west we saw some amazing scenery as we rode through Durango and Mancos.
When we reached Cortez, U.S. 160 turns south through the Ute Mountain Indian Reservation on the Colorado side of the Four Corners National Monument which is the only point in the United States where four states meet: Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona.
The landscape quickly changed from mountains to high desert as we crossed into Arizona in the Navajo Nation.
The ride from Kayenta to Tuba City is absolutely beautiful, with multicolored cliffs on one side, and desert pastures on the other.
Towns are few and far apart on the Navajo Nation, and since we've been through this area numerous times we decided to stop for lunch at the Hogan Family Restaurant in Tuba City. It's a great lunch spot, and one day we plan to make time to walk through the Navajo Code Talkers Museum that is next door to the restaurant.
We started watching the sky, which over the past hour had turned from bright blue to covered with large, angry clouds that looked to be directly in our path as we turned south onto U.S. 89 toward Flagstaff.
We decided to stop and put on our rain gear as the sky turned almost completely black. Once again we were lucky that we missed the worst of the storm as the temperature dropped 30 degrees from 85 to 55 and we rode through scattered rain.
We're celebrating the last night on our cross-country trip in Flagstaff, with a short 2-hour ride home tomorrow morning. We can't believe the trip is almost over!
Here is today's route
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