![On one of her early trips to Kayenta, Lillian Wilhelm and her friends had to revert to old ways. Elephants Feet formation in the background. “Each time a Navajo hitched his ponies to a stubborn mass of metal and towed it to its destination, he thought a white man was stupid to forget that a horse was his best friend,” wrote Lillian’s friend, Mildred Kaye Smith.](https://www.canyoncountryzephyr.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Image10-copy-150x150.jpg)
“We had spent one night at Kayenta. No one could be even that short a time in the Wetherills’ house, hearing them talk, seeing the beautiful things hanging on their walls, without catching some of the riches to be found…
Government Rapid on the San Juan River isn’t just misnamed, it’s in the wrong place! The name is based on a supposed boat accident that occurred during the 1921 USGS Trimble Survey of the river. We know it is located somewhere downstream of the Goosenecks portion of the river canyons and upstream of Slickhorn Canyon, but where exactly remained a question in 1956 when Otis “Dock” Marston asked Kenny Ross – “where exactly is Government Rapid?”