Yesterday I went to Gallup NM to go shopping and enjoy time away from Chinle. Normally the route taken over paved highway lasts about two hours. I had heard about a "shortcut" over Indian Route 7 that goes over the mountains between Chinle and Fort Defiance. It is marked on most maps although it is shown as a dirt/gravel road for about 25 miles.
So began an adventure over Route 7.
Route 7 climbs from 5500 feet of Chinle to over 8000 feet at the high point. After being paved for the first 15 miles through Canyon De Chelly National Monument it turns to dirt or at this of year mud. It narrows to one lane if you can call it a lane and is rutted with furrows and thick viscous mud. It must have been created before the Spanish came on wagons because this time of year one is much better off walking through parts of it. I should have paid attention to the fact there was no traffic in the other direction. I had two voices in my head: one (the angel) telling me to turn around now before I sank into the ooze forever: the other (the devil) saying to just keep going because it would soon get better. As my wife knows well, the devil usually wins.
Up and down I went through muddy ruts and narrow passes. My black Mitsubishi was now coated in red. After an hour of this I saw a car up ahead that was stopped in the middle of the road before a water filled 20 foot long ditch. I stopped, got out and met a nice German couple trying to decide to go through the ditch. They had been using a GPS unit which stated that this route was the shortest between Chinle and Gallup. "We don't have roads like this in Germany!" they said. However, they do have fools like myself in the USA so as they watched I backed up to get some distance and speed and went right through the ditch mud flying everywhere (I may have floated a bit). They soon followed and made it through without problem. They asked if I minded having a follower and the fool and two naive tourists continued on slowly until we hit the pavement near Fort Defiance.
I was coming home from Monument Valley and realized I would be going right past CDC. So I took the detour and my GPS updated the route. I saw the pavement end and was honking it might be like Michigan dirt roads which are easy for my Prius to handle. I found out that I was wrong, but I was like...if I try to turn around I will get stuck in the middle of nowhere and have absolutely no cell signal. So I continued. Through plenty of mud holes, soft spots, washboard sections, and potholes galore. The worst spot was a section where I was going downhill and suddenly it was like I was driving down stairs. My poor car bottomed out like there was no tomorrow. I thought it was toast. But it pulled through. I finally got to my destination for the day (Amarillo, TX) and surveyed the damage. My undercarriage was toast. But I was lucky that I had no body damage.
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