We drove north from Phoenix through the surprisingly green Sonoran desert with its iconic Saguaro cactuses.

We’ve driven this road before, two years ago, on our way to Cottonwood and Sedona, but this time we stayed east and went through Flagstaff and into the Painted Desert and the huge Navajo reservation. North of Flagstaff, sheltered by its imposing San Francisco Peaks,

we passed through a volcanic area of cinder cones and craters. Then suddenly we were in the Painted Desert and the vast valley of the Little Colorado River. Most of this side of the valley, what is called the Moenkopi Foundation, is surfaced with dark red sandstone, shale, siltstone, and mudstone layers, in myriad combinations of colors.

The Moenkopi Foundation was laid down on an extensive west-sloping plain across which a Triassic sea advanced and retreated several times, leaving behind the bones of sea creatures that decomposed into sandstone and shale. Skeletons of fossil amphibians and casts of reptile footprints have been recovered from Triassic rocks over 250 million years old, at a time when the continents were still attached to one another.

Our road turned east and traveled through more colorful Mesozoic rock formations in hues of green, blue, and yellow as well as all the shades of red and pink.

The layers of rock were endlessly fascinating to watch. Photos can’t begin to do it justice.

Our destination for today was Tuba City, and I wondered what connection there could be between the Navajo and tubas. The story is that Tuba City was named to honor Chief Tuuvi, a Hopi leader of the late 19th century. The Navajo name for the town is Tó Naneesdizi, which refers to springs under the ground. The Navajo reservation completely surrounds the Hopi reservation, like a donut around its hole, and Tuba City is on the Navajo reservation, not the Hopi reservation, so I don’t know why the Navajos don’t call the town by its Navajo name instead of by an adaptation of a Hopi name. Clearly there’s a lot I don’t understand here.

Anyway, our RV park is just behind the Navajo Interactive Museum, a wonderful interpretive center that we spent some time in this afternoon. In it is a Code Talkers display that celebrates one of the most important moments in Marine Corps history, when during World War II 29 Navajo volunteers were recruited by a Marine general who had grown up with his missionary parents on the Navajo reservation. The Navajo language has a complex grammar and an unwritten language, and it was spoken only on the Navajo lands of the American Southwest. Its syntax and tonal qualities, not to mention dialects, made it unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure and training, so it was thought that it could be used to transmit military information by undecipherable code.

Staged tests of these 29 volunteers under simulated combat conditions demonstrated that Navajo men could encode, transmit, and decode a three-line English message in 20 seconds, versus the 30 minutes required by machines at that time. The Navajo code talkers were commended for their skill, speed, and accuracy demonstrated throughout the war. At the Battle of Iwo Jima, Major Howard Connor, 5th Marine Division signal officer, had six Navajo code talkers working around the clock during the first two days of the battle. These six sent and received over 800 messages, all without error. Connor later stated, “Were it not for the Navajos, the Marines would never have taken Iwo Jima.” By the end of the war, there were over 500 Code Talker Marines. The museum has a number of artifacts and memorabilia from their experiences.

In the cultural part of the museum, the first thing you see is a replica of a hogan, the traditional home of the Diné (Din-EH), which is actually what the Navajo call themselves. It can be round, cone-shaped, multi-sided, or square, with or without internal posts. The frame is covered with weeds, bark, or grass, and earth, except at the apex, where the smoke from the fire in the center of the floor is allowed to escape. The door always faces east to welcome the rising sun for blessings, wealth, and good fortune (which I believe is also a Chinese feng shui principle).

Inside were some beautiful pieces of pottery,

although the Navajo are known not for their pottery but for their weaving.

There were lots of magnificent examples of weaving that, I’m sorry to say, brought back the memory of when we wove small Navajo rugs in 3rd grade and a classmate convinced the teacher that my beautiful and intricate design was hers. I was stuck with her boring and misshapen rug, and I’m still pissed.