Big Horn Canyon Boating Pictures

Bighorn Canyon Boating

 We recently had a wonderful day on the water in the Bighorn Canyon.  Here is a picture of our truck and boat at the Devil's Canyon overlook.  That is Big Pryor Mountain in the background.

 The Bighorn River has been dammed and what was once a rushing whitewater river is now a lazy long lake that winds through a majestic canyon.

 

My daughter, Michelle and her fiancee, Tony joined us for this outing.  It was fun!

Inside Looking Out

I loved the look of the landscape from the inside of the cave.
There were some interesting water worn features on the interior - pillars and erosion.


Beautiful textures and colors both inside and out.

Here is Joe on the trail back down. You may be able to see the blue pick up truck in the center of the image above.

Pryor Mountain Cave

We spotted this cave from the Sage Creek road in the Pryor Mountains. We noticed it had a trail leading up to it.

It looks like people drive ATV's up here. We drove the partway up the road in the pick-up, but hiked the rest of the way. It was steep.


This is not a very deep cave, but would certainly have provided shelter from the weather. I hoped there might be a petroglyph or pictograph, but it seemed as if this cave has had a lot of erosion. If there was ever any rock art it is now all on the cave floor.


We enjoyed exploring it. More pictures of the cave tomorrow.

National Forest in the Pryors

We stopped partway up East Pryor Mountain (we never did get to the top) and ate our lunch while enjoying the view. We only saw a few other vehicles the entire day.

Fall Colors in the Pryor Mountains

Pryor Mountain Drive

We have had some really beautiful weather this fall and we took advantage of it by heading out to the Pryor Mountains. We ran into a few snags - closed roads, etc. These pictures are all taken before we actually got to the Custer National Forest.

The Beartooth Mountains are off in the distance - kind of hazy because of the smoke from nearby forest fires.This is called Black Butte, according to my map.


This is a view of Big Pryor Mountain - which is 8465 feet in elevation.

En Toto Petroglyphs - Pryor Mountains

Thanks for bearing with me while I post one last group of Petroglyphs from Petroglyph Canyon in the Pryor Mountains. This panel is quite well known. It is printed on the cover of a BLM Publication.

En Toto pecked petroglyphs are found in only about two dozen sites, mainly in Montana and Wyoming. These were probably created between 1000 AD and 1000 BC.

This panel is located right across the canyon from the one I showed above. This looks like it might have been some sort of shelter to me (below). There are six human figures on the exterior wall. One of the interesting things about this group is two of the figures are female (most petroglyphs are male - in case you haven't noticed the exaggerated phalluses! ) Petroglyphs frequently have exaggerated genitalia and the females here have vaginas deeply pecked.

The figures are not as easy to see, since they are not pecked into rock having desert varnish (dark covering) that makes most of the glyphs so obvious.

Travel Log Tuesday - Petroglyph Canyon, Pryor Mountains

We visited Petroglyph Canyon in the Pryor Mountains on a warm spring day last week.

We hiked maybe a mile or less down into the canyon, walking on an old creek bed.

I loved this twig nest piled against the cliff in the canyon. It was huge, probably 7 feet high.

Petroglyph Canyon Pryor Mountains

Some of the petroglyphs on this panel are well formed, others are less so.

En Toto , or pecked figures are all we saw here in Petroglyph Canyon

Petroglyph Canyon Rock Art

We have rarely seen archers in rock art, since the use of the bow and arrow is fairly recent ( maybe around 1,000 years ago). This one is badly eroded, but still recognizable. Joe has heritage as an archer, so this is a favorite.

The animal depicted here is probably a canine of some kind.

This animal is probably a bear.

I love the people with the bent legs - as if seated. We've not seen this style before.