Saturday, February 26, 2011
Amanda and I headed up to the Grand Mesa for a few hours this afternoon. There was a ton of new snow up there and it was still coming down hard. The wind was blowing pretty good, too. Before heading back down we did stop at the Union Cafe for some burgers 🙂
Snow & Pine
Trees in a Snowstorm
Presidents Day | Monday, February 21, 2011
Since I had Presidents Day off ffrom work and the weather was going to be nice, Jackson and I headed to the Moab area to search out some more rock art, plus to just do some general exploring and hiking. We couldn’t have asked for a better day in February and we managed to find quite a bit of rock art.
First up was the ‘Secret Grotto’ Hmm, what’s down in that crack?
Hey, look at that! Rock art hidden down here 🙂
Jackson in the ‘grotto’
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Bright and early Saturday morning, Amanda and I got up and headed west to the San Rafael Swell. We knew it was probably going to snow on us, but we didn’t realize just how much it was going to snow and for how long. We were meeting our friend Dave at the Rochester Creek Panel at 8:30am, and I gave us what I thought was plenty of time to get there. Unfortunately, once we reached the San Rafael Reef, we hit the snow. The interstate was covered, so driving was slower than I had planned. We finally made it to the Rochester Panel shortly after 9am, and I was expecting to find Dave waiting for us…..however he arrived about 20 minutes later because he got stuck driving slow in the snow much longer than we had, since he was coming from the Salt Lake area.
After he arrived we hiked over to the Rochester Panel in the snow. I pulled my camera out to take some photos and after a few minutes it was completely soaked, so I put it back away and didn’t really get any good photos there on this trip. When we returned back to the Jeep I grabbed my S90 and used that for the remainder of the trip 🙂
Our next stop was to visit the petroglyphs along the Moore Cutoff Road near the Molen Reef…
This is an interesting petroglyph on a nearby boulder that we found.
The Molen Reef towers above the large snake petroglyph in the snowstorm.
After finishing up there we bashed through the snow up into Short Canyon and then hiked the rest of the way. The snow was about 5-6″ deep at this point and had not let up on us once. We got soaked, but it was still a lot of fun….especially scrambling up to the rock art 🙂
Sunday, February 13, 2011
After leaving Fish Creek Cove we continued on our way home, but we made one last stop at the petroglyphs in Capitol Reef National Park.
Fremont Anthropomorphs
Capitol Reef Sheep
Many Fremont Sheep
After leaving Capitol Reef we stopped for a burger at Ray’s in Green River before finishing up the drive home. It was a great birthday weekend!
Sunday, February 13, 2011
After spending almost two full days at Fremont Indian State Park it was time to start heading home. Instead of taking I-70 all the way home like we had taken there, we headed west towards Boulder Mountain and Capitol Reef so that we could make a few more stops. Our first stop was Fish Creek Cove to check out the Headless Elk Pictograph Panel and other pictographs and petroglyphs.
A closer look at the headless elk pictographs.
One and a half Fremont anthropomorphic pictographs.
A few more pictographs located next to The Headless Elk Panel.
A close-up of two of the headless elk.
After searching the alcove in Fish Creek Cove for more pictographs and petroglyphs I found this ‘pictoglyph’ in the shade of a tree. I kind of like the effect of the shaded and sunny areas in this photo.
This small anthropomorph floats above the rest of the Headless Elk Panel
A fading anthropomorph on a striped wall.
A two-toned ‘shield-like’ figure
Stay tuned for the last part of this trip report in Capitol Reef.