The next morning was clear, cool, and a little nippy and windy. I wasn't up quite as early as the serious photographers, but I did catch this last little bit of the sunrise ...
Before setting out on our journey through the valley, we checked out the hogans ...
"Hogan" means home to the Navajo. They are sun-baked, mud covered shelters that can be built quickly and taken apart to be used at another location. The cone-shaped ones are called Male hogans, and more temporary, and the round shaped ones are Female hogans which are more permanent and can accommodate more people. Hogans are made of natural materials - cedar, barks, sand and water. With a simple fire, the heat retains for long hours in the winter. During the summer the temperature is always 25% cooler than the outside temperature.
That means when it is 100 degrees outside, it will be a cool 75 degrees in the hogan! We need some of these in Florida!
Oftentimes you will see a hogan next to a more modern home - which is most likely to be a trailer or double wide. It is used by the "elderly" and for ceremonial purposes.
We took more pictures of ourselves and the surroundings before setting off down the narrow and rocky road through the valley. For some reason this land feels very "masculine" to me. The John Wayne / cowboy connection? The phallic spires of the "monuments"?
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