RAINBOW BRIDGE TREK

Of a vacillating vacationist, wavering between ocean and mountains, I'd suggest you pack your riding boots and Levis in the old family bus and take a trip up through Navajo Land to the very northern edge of your home state, then slide down the winding trail into Utah and the Rainbow Natural Bridge territory. You'll have your money's worth every mile of the way, and comparatively few people have seen the great stone arch hidden away in such grim surroundings.

For those to whom the suggestion appeals, I'm attempting to draw a word picture of a mile by mile trek into this little known and roughest portion of the Navajo Reservation.

From U. S. Highway 66, six miles east of Flagstaff, our party of four in a station wagon with plenty of camping equipment, turned north on Highway 89. Lofty, snow-crowned San Francisco Peak, towering 12,794 feet in the air, looked down upon us as we wound through the singing yellow pines, a part of the greatest virgin forest existing. A few miles out a sideroad enticed us to follow it. When the car could go no farther we left it sulking in the cinders and climbed the volcanic hill known as Sunset Crater National Monument. Have you, as a child, played in fresh threshed wheat before the threshers got around to sacking it? Climbing this cinder cone gives the same effect. One goes up two steps and slides back three. Once the crater is reached, however, reward is ample. To the west, framed through intervening pines, the peaks gleam in the sunlight. Northward, over a rolling Persian carpet of Painted Desert, the Hopi Mesas are patterned against the sky. Everywhere the landscape is dotted with volcanic upthrusts and monoliths.

And sliding down the hill is quite easy!

Wupatki National Monument is seven miles off of Highway 89, and we took time out to briefly visit this prehistoric home of our present day Hopi, People of Peace. This group of some thirty-five or forty ruined dwellings are constructed of lava rock and red sandstone. The custodian and his wife keep house complacently in rooms that some dusky honeymooners doubtless occupied a thousand years ago. It's compulsory now and then to shovel a rattlesnake or two out of the way, but that's all in the day's work.

Just before we reach Cameron and the famous bridge across the Little Colorado, a paved road wanders off up a hill. We know this route leads into Desert View and the Watch Tower on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, but less traveled trails are beckoning and we follow on. Hubert Richardson has built quite an establishment at Cameron, cabins and garage and a homey stone lodge where delicious meals are served by Navajo girls. We lingered here awhile to watch the Navajos and Hopis trading their rugs and pottery, baskets and jewelry for the coveted wares on the shelves of the dim old trading post.

JULY, 1937 ARIZONA HIGHWAYS The Capitol at Washing-ton Could Sit Neat-ly Under the Arch Of the Rainbow Bridge and Not Be Crowded

Crossing the bridge high over the thick brown stream, our road passes among a number of petrified trees, crumbled into a gray mass of chips and splinters. I, being a dweller in Petrified Forest, turned my nose quite high, but my companions eagerly examined and appropriated some specimens.

Tuba City, one of the outposts of the Navajo Agency, was passed early in the afternoon without a stop, although we looked longingly at the cool poplars and cottonwoods murmuring contentedly to one another because their feet were immersed in rippling water flowing through the irrigation ditches. Navajo children waded and played in the water and waved dirty brown hands at us.

After we had left Tuba City and drove into the desert, the road just sort of dwindled away, and by the time Red Lake with its artificial pond was passed, about all we had to follow was a trail made by Indian wagons. Two big clumsy rocks, one on each side of the trail, are labeled "Elephant Feet" and I know they were not named by Indians, whose knowledge of elephants is absolutely nil. More and more frequently we passed flocks of sheep with small boys and girls in charge of them, and plenty of savage dogs to bark at us and chase us away from their property. We rounded a hill and found ourselves in the midst of a cedar bough corral filled with wagons and ponies and dogs and Navajos and pots and pans. Up on the slope of the hill a "Sing" was in progress, but we were firmly told not to get too inquisitive about what was going on under the ra-mada. However, a Hopi hovering on the outskirts of the crowd said on old Navajo woman had been struck by a rattlesnake, and the Medicine Man was curing her. I suggested to the Hopi that he get his Snake Priest, but he in-timated that Hopi medicine would be wasted on a mere unbelieving Navajo. At the mouth of the next canyon a grand-mother Navajo sat under a pinon shelter with her little girl companion, doubtless sulking because she was left at home to watch things instead of being at the Sing.

We drove as fast as possible because Mr. Richardson told us we would need to get over most of the road in daylight. We learned why, when the road entirely expired and all we had to follow was a white line painted on a landscape of smooth hillside. And so we followed the painted line, 'life line' we called it, until at the top of a hill we looked down on a scene of broken canyons in all hues of blue and red. And while we were looking a thunderstorm broke around us, beating the hot rocks until they steamed, and from the sage came a tantalizing odor of Thanksgiving tur-key filled with sage dressing. Pot holes in the rocks filled quickly with the rain-water and off came boots and stockings and we waded around heedless of the driving rain.

We had planned to stop over night at Inscription House Lodge and take the horseback trip down to Inscription House Ruin, also a National Monument. This prehistoric ruin was discovered by Spaniards in 1661 and they left their calling card in the form of names and dates peck-ed in the rocks nearby. But we left that exploration for a later date when we'd have time to inspect the dinosaur tracks and other fascinating spots around there, and drove on toward Navajo Mountain looming ahead of us.

Again the road forked, the right hand trail leading into Monument Valley, Kayenta, and on around to stupendous Canyon de Chelly, should one follow it far enough. Our way faced north, and at the end of the road we reached Rain-bow Lodge, another one of Hubert Richardson's ventures.

This rambling structure surrounded by vines and flowers and managed by Katharine Wilson, is the weary traveler's dream come true. It was sunset when we reached this haven, and after a shower fed from cool mountain springs, dinner was served on a balcony overlooking the country we had so laboriously traversed. It looked much smoother from this comfortable distance!

The great living room invited us with its soft couches and easy chairs and cases filled with the latest books, but the cabins among the pines were inviting too, and it seemed no time at all until

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