IntrepidXJ's Adventure Blog

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Amanda and I were both off on Veterans Day this year so we loaded up the Jeep and headed for Canyonland’s Island in the Sky District for the day. On our way there we stopped to check out some petroglyphs and pictographs.

Intestine Man pictograph panel

Before reaching Canyonlands, we took a side road to scout Marlboro Point for a future sunrise photo.

Crows Head Spire

When we reached Canyonlands we headed straight for Aztek Butte.

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Saturday, November 6, 2010

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve sort of been in a rock art mood lately. I figured I would keep in the rock art mood by heading over to the San Rafael Swell to check out a few of the rock art sites I have missed in the past.

Morning along Cottonwood Road

Bottleneck Peak

Even though I’ve stopped at the Buckhorn Wash Pictographs plenty of times before, I took a few drive-by photos as I passed them.

A little further up the Buckhorn Draw Road I parked off to the side of the road and hiked up to Ruin Arch.

Ruin Arch…if you look closely you can see two petroglyphs inside the arch

Close-up of the petroglyphs

It’s a cool arch that is easy to miss when driving by on the road below unless you are looking for it

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Saturday, October 30, 2010

On Saturday morning my friend Jackson and I headed to Green River and then south through the San Rafael Desert to the trailhead for Horseshoe Canyon (formerly Barrier Canyon). I have wanted to hike this canyon for a while to check out all of the pictographs, so I was excited to finally be there. The hike turned out to be just under 8 miles long after all of the side trips we took, and the weather was just about perfect. Here’s some photos of the pictographs we checked out along the way.

Our first stop was at the High Gallery

Then we stopped at the Horseshoe Gallery

Up next was the Alcove Gallery which was in a huge alcove. Unfortunately these pictographs were either worn off pretty good or vandalized.

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Sunday, October 24, 2010

Sunday I was on my own. I didn’t want to get too far away from home, but I really had no idea of where I was going when I left the house. I pointed my Jeep towards Moab and started driving. Along the way I decided to stop at Onion Creek to hike the narrows.

When I was done hiking I figured that I would head up into the La Sal Mountains to see if I could find any remaining fall colors.

View back to Castle Valley as I headed up the Loop Road

Pinhook Valley was pretty colorful…it’s slowly returning after the fire a few years ago

Colorful scrub oak in the burn area

Still some patches of golden aspens

Haystack Mountain in the clouds

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Sunday | October 10, 2010

Sunday morning we were up early, had some breakfast and packed up camp. We would be heading home today, but not the way we came. We would be heading out through Canyonlands National Park’s Needles District.

Warning sign before dropping down into Bobbys Hole

The trail down into Bobbys Hole wasn’t bad, just a little rough

Welcome to Canyonlands

The Needles

We stopped to take a hike on The Joint Trail to Chesler Park. Amanda really enjoyed this hike since she had not done it before.

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