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Native American Southwest Travel Seminar, Accredited Archaeological
Field Trip
New Jersey College
9 Days
Day 1:
Fly from
Philadelphia, PA to Phoenix.
Day
2:
Navajo Nation: Hubble
Trading Post, 4x4 tour of Canyon de Chelly, Arizona.
Travel to Ganado and visit the Hubbell National Historical
Site, the oldest continuously operating trading post on the Navajo
Nation and a great place to see Navajo rugs and jewelry from the
various geographical areas of the reservation.
From Ganado, go to Chinle for lunch at the Thunderbird Lodge.
Then a Navajo guided half day 4X4 tour of spectacular Canyon
de Chelly National Monument, located on Navajo Tribal Trust Lands
and famous for its
well preserved Anasazi ruins and ancient rock art.
Aside from its outstanding
thirteenth century cliff dwellings and petroglyphs,
the Canyon gives us the opportunity to gain insight into
the living community of Navajo people who still cultivate the
valley floor.
Day
3:
Travel to Page, Arizona.
Navajo guided tour of
Antelope Canyon, Lake Powell Dinner Cruise.
One of the most photographic landscapes in the U.S., Antelope
Canyon is a slot canyon located in the high sandstone desert of
Northern Arizona, near the Glen Canyon Dam.
The photo opportunities here are unsurpassed.
That evening we take a cruise on Lake Powell and have a
gourmet dinner on board while marveling at the magnificent scenery
of Glen Canyon.
Day
4:
Boxed lunch included.
Navajo Nation: Navajo
Guided Monument Valley Tour.
In
Monument Valley we will take a tour of the magnificent buttes
and canyons, used as a backdrop for many western films and
commercial advertisements.
On our way to Cortez we will stop at the Twin Rocks Trading
Post, possibly the nicest trading post on the Navajo reservation.
Day
5:
Mesa Verde National
Park.
Site of the most extensive Anasazi archaeological ruins in
the West, Mesa Verde
preserves a wide array of prehistoric Native American cliff
dwellings built high on mesa tops or defensively tucked into the
canyon’s crevices, including
Sun Temple and Cliff
Palace.
Dwellings range from pre-Chacoan pit houses starting in the AD 500’s
to Chacoan villages on the mesa top, to post Chacoan cliff dwellings
erected in the AD 1200’s, tracing the growth and development of Mesa
Verde life and architecture over seven centuries.
Day
6:
Aztec Archaeological
Ruins, Chaco Canyon
World Heritage Site, New Mexico.
Boxed lunch included.
Aztec is a post Chaco Canyon site and important in the
Chacoan time line. We
will make a quick stop at Aztec on our way to Chaco.
Aztec has the best restored great Kiva in the U.S. where we
will learn about great Kivas (huge underground ceremonial chambers),
and then carry our knowledge to Chaco.
Chaco Canyon was a major center of Anasazi ancestral Puebloan
culture, a hub for trade, ritual, and administration for the Four
Corners area from AD 850 to 1150.
This secluded canyon preserves the magnificent ruins of the
ancient monumental buildings, kivas, astronomical alignments, and
Chaco’s ancient system of roads, irrigation canals, and dams.
The sites are part of the sacred homeland of the Puebloan
people.
Day 7:
Living Pueblo Indian Tribes.
Native guided tour of Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico, and the
Spanish mission built in 1629.
Known as “Sky City”, Acoma Pueblo was a Chacoan outlier, built in
the AD 1100’s atop a high sandstone mesa for defense against
raiders. It is the
oldest continuously inhabited city in the U.S.
After
our visit to Sky City we will pick up boxed lunches and travel to
Zuni Pueblo and tour Old Zuni Mission
to see the world famous murals of Zuni ceremonial Kachinas, as
well as visit a Zuni Trading Post to appreciate the wide array of
beautiful Zuni arts and crafts.
Zuni was the first native settlement visited in 1540 by Spanish
explorer Coronado, who thought it was one of the legendary Seven
Golden Cities of Cíbola.
The inhabitants of Acoma and Zuni Pueblos are the direct
descendants of the ancient Anasazi and were established on the heels
of the collapse of the Chacoan Empire.
Day
8:
Scenic drive back to
Phoenix, via the White
Mountains, Fort Apache and the silver and copper mining towns of
Globe and Superior.
Located in the heart of Apache country, Fort Apache preserves the
history of both conflict and cooperation between the U.S. government
and the various bands of the Western Apache and their leaders
Geronimo and Cochise.
We will pass through the magnificent and rugged Salt River Canyon on
our way back to Phoenix.
We will stop in the Sonoran Desert along the way and give you
an introduction to this most diverse of all the world’s deserts.
Day
9:
Transfer to Airport included.
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