However, it rained hard last night and the weather forecast is very iffy for the next several days. We cannot travel backcountry roads when they are wet. (Well, we can try, but we might be sleeping in the car.)
Besides Moab seems like home, and we have blogging to do. But we get a scare as the MacBook Pro starts freezing up. We call the closest expert—in Price, 120 miles to the north—and make an appointment.
But a computer that crashes shall not keep us down.
Yesterday, things went a lot better. We drove through the San Rafael Swell on I-70 (highly recommended).
Historical markers gave an overview of geological oddities and historical curiosities, like the use of the area by outlaws in the late 1800s.
Posses were afraid to follow the outlaw gangs (like Butch Cassidy’s) into the maze of canyons. Not only was there a danger of ambush, but one can get lost and die in there. Or get shot by unsympathetic ranchers.
We got to see Black Dragon Canyon from above.
The San Rafael Swell is not really a “plateau” or mesa. It was formed when the mountains began to rise on the Colorado Plateau and squeezed portions of the plateau upward. This usually involved the migration of huge salt deposits under the existing earth. At the top of the Swell is the Permian strata of earth, over 250 million years old. All the later rock (another 5,000 feet higher) has been eroded away. So will I-70, sooner or later. Eagle Canyon is a particularly impressive ditch.
We also saw outcroppings of deep maroon “hematite” on the lighter colored rock formations.
No wonder Barrier Canyon peoples regarded the deep red pigment as a gift from the landscape spirits.
Our destination yesterday was the “Head of Sinbad” pictographs. The road there was as challenging as we have yet faced.
Yet we saw encouraging homemade signposts pointing the way for us.
The pictographs were featured in a county brochure (that no one really reads), but the roads there required us to consult a National Geographic topographical map and to dodge rocks as best we could and navigate flash flood gullies. At one point, we had to go under I-70 by means of a narrow, single-lane tunnel.
The final few miles to the site required driving on a one-lane, sandy path that we were not sure was a road or a trail.
Bear in mind that we did not see a single person or vehicle the entire 3 hours that we were off the highway; we did not want to break down. But the Jeep came through it all with ease. Still, we parked a half-mile from the pictographs to be on the safe side and hiked the remainder of the way.
Clouds looked threatening but we knew that rain was more likely to come in the late afternoon. (And it did downpour later.)
The Sinbad panels are small
and located on a high standing semi-circular standing rock formation separating the open prairie from the canyons.
But the surviving pictographs are amazingly vivid.
The main panel
show a sacred anthropomorph accompanied by two James-Cameron-Avatar-like fringed creatures, not the usual horned serpents.
Over its head, is the serpent and an enigmatic circle.
To the side is another animated helper (?), wearing what looks like a mortar board.
To the left are two other figures.
One is goggle-eyed (or bug-eyed, whichever you prefer; the other is holding a serpent.
This time there is a menagerie of Avatar-like creatures.
There are circles with tails, like comets or pollen seeds. Horseshoe forms floating above.
Winged creatures that look like small, cartoonish birds. But the most interesting companions were the seven tiny, flying things between the two figures.
Even we were not sure what they were using our naked eyes. My camera allowed me to take a close-up (ok, I was standing on Janet’s shoulders).
They do not appear to be birds, but tiny floating anthropomorphs. Perhaps they are the messengers from one world to another—the real shamans.
What is the "paint" material?
ReplyDeleteIt looks like you could stay in Moab and get many, many photos!