Back in 2016, I was traveling through northern Arizona, researching obscure highways for possible inclusion in Arizona and New Mexico: 25 Scenic Side Trips, which, at that time, was still a work in progress. I stopped in Second Mesa, on the Hopi Reservation, to check in with my friend Joe Day at the Tsakurshovi Trading Post. (This was a few years before Joe and his wife Janice retired and closed their shop). I was on my way to Farmington that day, and since Joe knew the area better than anybody, I asked him if there were any particularly scenic roads that might be good alternatives to the main highway.
“Are you going straight east to Gallup?” he asked me. “Or were you going north first, past Canyon de Chelly?”
“I wouldn’t mind going past Canyon de Chelly,” I said. “I won’t have time to stop, but I love the area.”
“Here’s what you should do,” said Joe, rummaging behind the counter for a map. (A well-worn copy of Indian Country, a detailed map of the Four Corners region put out by AAA, and highly recommended). “We’re here,” he went on, stabbing a finger at Second Mesa, then tracing along the curvy line of State Route 264. “Go east to 191, then north to Chinle. You know the road that follows the North Rim of Canyon de Chelly?”
“Sure. The road that ends at the Mummy Cave Overlook.”
“Right,” said Joe. “But it doesn’t end at the Overlook. You’ll want to keep going on that road, Route 64, until you get to Tsaile, where it intersects Navajo Route 12.” He pointed out the junction on the map, then traced his finger north. “Head toward Round Rock, but look sharp on your right, and after a few miles you’ll take the turnoff for Route 13, the road to Lukachukai. Go through the town, then stay on Route 13 up and over the pass at the top of the mountains. There’s red rock, pine forest. and great views. You’ll come down the other side, near the New Mexico state line, close to Shiprock, and from there, Farmington is a hop and a skip.”
“Is it paved? Or will I be glad I’m driving a Jeep?”
“It’s a good road,” Joe assured me. “There’s a gas field in the Lukachukais. They had to upgrade the road to get the trucks and equipment up there.”
Joe pretty much had me when he mentioned Shiprock. I knew it was a volcanic formation of some sort, but that was all I knew. I’d never been in that part of New Mexico, so I’d never seen it for myself, and I wasn’t sure if it was worth including in thebook. Looking at Joe’s map, it was obvious that I’d be passing close to it. Maybe I’d get a nice view of the peak from a distance, coming down off the mountains. And, there was an added bonus: this route was actually a shortcut!
I had an uneventful drive from Second Mesa to Chinle, the gateway to Canyon de Chelly National Monument. That’s a place I know quite well, one of my favorites in all the world, so it seemed quite strange to be driving through the area with no plans to stop. I passed through the town, and when I reached the National Monument Visitor’s Center, I took the left hand fork, onto Route 64, the North Rim Drive. That road, which I’d driven many times, leads to several overlooks offering views into Canyon del Muerto. In the past, I’d always turned around at the last of these, the Mummy Cave Overlook. This time I kept going, and just as Joe said, I ended up in Tsaile, at the intersection with Navajo Route 12.
After driving north for a few miles, I reached the turnoff for Lukachukai, and, following Joe’s instructions, I headed off on Navajo Route 13. Just as he’d promised, it was a very pretty drive, along a good road lined with red rock cliffs.
A series of short switchbacks took me higher, through scrubby piñons into an actual pine forest. I had no clue that these mountains were high enough to accommodate a forest, but there it was, and Joe was right about the gas field, also. There were dozens of side roads posted with signs, but at that time of day, there were no workers anywhere about, and no other vehicles coming from either direction.
I made it to 8,000 foot Buffalo Pass, the high point of the road, and started down the other side. It was getting late in the day, so there were long shadows spilling across the landscape. From that vantage point, everything I was seeing was in New Mexico, including a distant formation that was very obviously Shiprock.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but from there, from so far away, it wasn’t particularly impressive. There was good light on the scene from the lowering sun, but there was a fair bit of dust in the air, so Shiprock was all but lost in the haze.
The formation stood more or less alone, rising up from a level plateau, but it was impossible to tell how big it was, because there was nothing around it to lend a sense of scale. All in all, I was disappointed, because this was hardly the dramatic perspective I was hoping to find.
As I descended the mountains, I stopped a few times to focus on the formation with my telephoto lens. That brought the peak closer, and the setting sun added some nice contrasting shadows. The sun was dropping fast, and it was beginning to look like these distant photos were the best I was going to get. I figured that by the time I got down there on the flat, close enough to really SEE Shiprock, there wasn’t going to be any daylight left to see it by. I used my zoom to blow the thing up as big as I could get it, snapped one last frame, and set my camera on the seat beside me, pretty sure that I was done taking pictures for that particular day.
Once I got down to flat ground I was able to move a little faster. I don’t much like being out on those empty roads after dark, so I focused on making time. I passed through the tiny community of Red Valley, where the road curved to the east. From there, it was pretty much a straight shot to US 491, which is a larger highway. I figured if I could make it that far before it got full dark, I’d be in good shape, so I put my pedal to the metal, and kept my eyes focused on the road ahead, looking out for wildlife or any other hazards in the darkening landscape. Shiprock was there, off to my left, but I wasn’t paying much attention to it, figuring it was already too dark for photos.
I was probably doing close to 70, a bit too fast for that stretch of road, especially in the half-dusk. The sun was on the far side of the Lukachukais, so once it dropped below the ridgeline, the whole world was in shadow, earth and sky in shades of gray, getting darker by the minute. I noticed an odd rock formation coming up fast on the left side of the road, almost like a wall built of angular blocks.
Shiprock was close, but hidden from view by the rock wall as I zoomed toward it. After I passed the odd formation, I stole a quick glance in my rearview mirror, and what I saw was a scene so other-wordly, it literally stopped me in my tracks:
I screeched to a halt and flipped a quick U-turn, then sped back to a side road that ran parallel to that wall of rock. I parked and jumped out, and right at that moment, the sky brightened with an orange hue, the last gasp of daylight. I had about 30 seconds to click off half a dozen hand-held frames before the last trace of color faded from the sky.
This was it–my “Quinn-tessential” Shiprock Sunset shot, and it couldn’t have been more perfectly timed. Truth be told, at the moment when I took the picture, I didn’t even know what I was shooting, because the “wall” that added so much to the composition was still a complete mystery. One thing was certain: it wasn’t planning that got me that shot. It was my old friend, Serendipity.
A week or two later, I was consolidating my notes from that trip, and editing some of the pictures. That’s when I finally did my research, and found out just what the heck it was that I’d stumbled across. The rock wall that intersects Navajo Route 13 at that spot is known as a lava dike. Some 27 million years ago, the formation we now call Shiprock lay deep within the throat of a volcano that exploded, opening cracks in the earth that radiated from the crater like the spokes of a wheel. Magma filled the cracks, cooled, and solidified into rock. Over the eons, the bulk of the extinct volcano eroded away, along with most of the surrounding plateau, exposing that plug of harder rock from its core and the hardened magma that had filled those cracks.
The 1600 foot tall Shiprock formation is sacred to the Navajo, and it’s off limits to outsiders, expecially rock climbers. There are roads that take you closer, but they’re all on private property, and it would be disrespectful (as well as illegal) to drive on those roads without permission. The Navajo name for the peak is Tsé Bitʼaʼí, “Rock with Wings,” in reference to the radiating lava dikes.
I definitely wanted to include Buffalo Pass and Shiprock in the book, so I created a route, Scenic Side Trip #16, that starts in Holbrook at an exit off Interstate 40, then takes in both Canyon de Chelly and Monument Valley before crossing the Lukachukais, and taking in a spectacular view of the Rock with Wings before rejoining I-40 in Gallup.
Beautiful photos and lovely road trip story