Bloomington Petroglyphs - St. George UT

No one really knows when people first arrived in this part of the country, but throughout the ages several groups have called it home. In order, the known groups are Early Hunter/Gatherers, Desert Archaic, Ancestral Puebloan (aka Anasazi), and Paiute. They have all left their marks here. Most of the petroglyphs shown below were thought to have been created by the Ancestral Puebloans as early as 2,000 years ago. As with most of these places, all of what I just said can't really be attributed to exact time periods.

These petroglyphs are located in a little neighborhood park, but it's really just a small area set aside to preserve them. In some of the photos you can see some of the houses. I'm happy to report that we saw very little vandalism.

I'm glad the site is somewhat protected, but was surprised that they would allow structures to be built so close to it at all. A while later I was REALLY surprised to learn that there are also petroglyphs boulders in people's back yards!  When I say surprised, I don't mean it in a good way. It makes me wonder how much history was bulldozed to "develop" this area. It didn't take long for me to find out that many things were destroyed. Have I ever mentioned that I really dislike developers? I'll jump off my soap box now. On with the petroglyphs!

The petros are on those large rocks in the middle of the park. The house to the right is currently for sale. I thought it would be cool to live right across the street. Then reality hit me. There is always some grizzly old guy in the neighborhood chasing kids off his lawn. That guy would most certainly be me. Of course there aren't any lawns here, so I'm sure I'd be obsessed with protecting the petros instead.

 It must have been quite a sight to see that large rock split in half.

 Based on the angle of the petros on the front rock, It must have split a very long time ago.

 It looks like there are at least two layers of petros in some spots.

 The presence of a grinding surfaces tells us that this area was also used for some type of habitation. Maybe a seasonal, or temporary camp, or maybe even a village. We will never know what else was in the area.

These little depressions are known as "cupules" and considered by many to be a very early form of petroglyphs. 

 Large spiral

 Graffiti mixed with some petros

Although we were just in this area a short while ago, I'm chomping on the bit to go back. There is much to see and do.

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Snow Canyon - Slot Canyon

This is the start of the trail to Jenny's Canyon.  Not to be confused with Jenny's Overlook. Man, this Jenny (donkey or human) must have been something.

A little further up the trail.

Further still. Now it's gotten very narrow.

We're about half way in the slot canyon. The top is closer together than the bottom and is about 200 feet straight up.

Almost to the end.

The end.

My obligatory odd shot.

Coming back down the trail.

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I'm pretty sure this concludes the posts from our recent Arizona/Utah road trip. I have MANY more photos, but I don't want this to get boring.  I have a few posts left to do from our latest trip to the Central California coast.  Right now, we're in our RV up on our favorite mountain top. We're on a ridge line overlooking the Anza-Borrego desert.  The wind has been doing it's best to blow us off that ridge line. Right now it's storming big time and we're hoping to wake up covered in snow.  Fingers crossed...

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Snow Canyon Utah - Jenny's Overlook

I'm not really clear on exactly who Jenny was, but they named this overlook after her. While not a long trail, it was pretty steep and rough. There was apparently an easier path to the top, but of course we missed that one! Some of these pics are on the way up and some on the way down. The last photo is the "view" from the overlook. I'd enlarge that one, because it looks much better that way.

My favorite

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Snow Canyon Utah

Back to Utah for a post.  Snow Canyon is truly an undiscovered jewel. It's close to a few national parks and because of this, people just pass right by. If you are ever in southern Utah, it's a must see.

The road into Snow Canyon. We were awestruck when we saw this scene for the first time (a few weeks ago).

No jeep roads here, so we had to dismount and explore on foot.  This trail took us to those low red rock formations. They are petrified (or solidified) sand dunes.

The dunes.

This is an odd shot. Not because of the scenery, but because I'm in it.

Just because...

The clouds really made these photos.

More sand dunes.

An amazing vista.

Very high desert, so it's not as hot as it looks. That's my wife heading towards that large, bright red formation.

I still have a couple more posts to do from this trip, so I'm going to continue alternating them with pics from our just completed roadie to the central California coast.

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Southern Utah Jeep Trek

As you know, a few weeks ago we took a roadie to Northern Arizona and Southern Utah.  During our stay we took a few back road/no road treks. In my last jeep based blog post I referred to this trip and said it was a bit scarier.  So, I'll just start this post with the scary part.   (the best pic of this post is the last one, but I hope you look at the entire post)

The other side of the jeep is very close to a sheer cliff. You can see for yourself how far this side is from the a drop off that was at least 100 feet straight down.

This is before the road got really narrow. Same drop off here, but the road was a bit wider.  My wife was afraid to ride in the jeep while we passed through here, so I had her take a photo. Just kidding. She was driving. We usually split up our RV and/or jeep driving.  I wasn't afraid, honest!  As far as the road goes, this was actually the smoothest part.  After this portion...

We got to use this "road?" next. I'm not sure I'd call it a road, but at least we didn't have to worry about falling off a cliff. We were on this one for a long time. The rough ride was worth it because it took us to a BLM (bureau of land management) road that was pretty nice.

Our goal was an awesome grove of Oak trees at the base of those mountains. Once we were almost there, we found a barricade across the road. We weren't too happy that we came all that way for nothing. Oh well, we had a good time getting there.

Okay, enough of that, now for some photos, not taken through a window...

When we got to the barricade, we were at the base of the large grayish mountains in the far background.  For those of you in the Utah area, we started our trek from the small town of Hurricane.

This was my favorite photo of the day

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