After we made it across the stream at the White House Ruins, chronicled in the Obstacle theme post, we had this incident. We were still under the mistaken impression that our rental car had four wheel drive. It did not. And that would be our downfall, and end our excursion into Canyon de Chelly.
There was a stretch in the canyon of several hundred meters of sand. We made it about a hundred or so meters in. And the SUV bottomed out. The vehicle was actually resting on the sand. We tried to dig the tires out, but the tires wound up spinning in air. We gathered scraps of drift wood and attempted to wedge it under the tires. The spinning tires made a very effective log launcher.
Several other tourist vehicles drove past ours. The tourists smiled and waved. And the drivers kept on driving. But as noted in the obstacle post, our Navajo guide was friends with some of the canyon residents. Fortunately for us his friends drove by. And they had chains. And they were willing to tow us out. Our guide later explained that the other tour drivers were reluctant to help because if anything went wrong they could be held liable. But since he was friends with these folks they would help us.
And now I have a fun story to embarrass my co-worker with. And a blog post.
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