Last week my church was involved in a Vacation Bible School for Pinon Gospel Church. While there was not a great deal of time to explore the beautiful country of the Dine (Navajo) people, I did encounter sheep on a few days driving between Chinle were we stayed and Pinon. We saw sheep the first day driving into Chinle but was unable to photograph them. They were grazing right along the road; their form of roadside weed mowers.
Every evening we looked for them and finally Thursday evening they were at the same spot as we saw them the first night. Many of the pictures were taken while driving up and down the street. The traffic was light for the most part and I could do U turns pretty easy. (I was fortunate their were no tribal police watching this stretch of road) The local people know to slow down when there are sheep along the side of the road; it is the tourist who fly by in a hurry to go… where? These sheep are someone’s livelihood so drive carefully when you see sheep along the road ways in Arizona!
Many days we saw the sheep in the distance grazing and these were easier to photograph. The two pictures were taken with and without a telephoto lens.
On our drive home this past Friday, we spotted this group crossing the road with three herding dogs. Notice the small pup in the group; herding dog in training! The pup was very vocal about us stopping and so we did not linger. These sheep looked to be in better health (fatter) than the ones we saw in Chinle. It was just another day on the Arizona sheep trail by the jolly sheep babe! By the way, that is what #farmbabe, who I met at the Women in Ag Conference in Tucson, now calls me!
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