More than Words Can Say
When it comes to assembling a page for this site, there is a balance of content and images. That was simply impossible to negotiate for this location. We have too many photos to share, but little to say. The walk we took was probably less than a mile, and the number of petroglyphs we saw was countless.
It was kind of a slow drive out there looking for the place. Not much else was in the area. We brought our own snack and drinks and had that in the lot before we went into the ranger station. There were picnic benches available, but we were kind of raring to go. We had camped the night before on BLM land down the road and stopped a few times to let horses get out of the road before we finally had the ranger station/visitor center in site.
We started at the ranger's station where the ranger lent us a walking stick to thump the ground with to make sure snakes would stay away from us. This was a pretty upsetting concept. I do love snakes, but not hiding in sneaky little places near my ankles. I am sure they do not like me treading close to their happy little sunspots either.
The trail is obvious, slow, and kind of steep and rugged, and at times we meandered to see good angles of the petroglyphs. There were a lot of images of life, like faces and birds and animals that we described as dinosaurs and lobsters, though I am sure we were quite wrong, as they were more likely birds. The other common theme is circles and circle patterns, and blanket style patterns.
Some of the more interesting ones were an animal whose body had a blanket pattern and a face whose nose was the corner of the rock and the cheeks were each side. One of my favorites was the two bats hanging side by side. One was pecked in solid, and the other was an outline. I creatively named them Black Bat and White Bat (photo above). Another favorite was a horned sheep or ram (maybe that is the same thing) with a pattern in its body and two arrows in his back.
We were probably on the trail for less than two hours, maybe closer to an hour and fifteen minutes. There is a lot to see in densely packed locations. I would feel tired, then we would look ahead and see that we had to go all the way down hill to go up the next hill. The trail was a mix of dirt and rocks, and there was really not any shade. I can't imagine we would get los as the ranger could probably see us at every point as the view is so wide open. The land itself is just absolutely beautiful.
If we went back I am sure we would see hundreds more petroglyphs that we did not get to see the first time. We did not go very far, but we did still get to see a lot. We understand there are also some ruins in the area to visit as well that we would like to come back and see some day. We thoroughly enjoyed this site, and one thing we did not see while we visited were snakes.
