Hiking pics

That's Arches NP waaaaay off in the distance. If you make the photo bigger, you can actually see one of the arches.

I love Peter Pan.

Cowboy Cave--occupied for about 10,000 years. One of the most important sites in the southwest. Deerskin bags! Basketry! Holocene bison dung!

Dylan being EXTREME! View of the canyon holding Moab and the Colorado River.

Railroad put in during the uranium boom.

Bowtie arch...that I'm re-naming Pantheon Arch.

Close-up of the above.

The Great Gallery, Maze District

The Great Gallery, and all of the other pictograph panels in Horseshoe Canyon, are some of the most famous panels of rock art in the US. Certainly in the southwest. They're also bloody inaccessible and involve well over 50 miles of tough gravel road. My poor baby never would have made it out there, so I feel very lucky that work gave me the chance to see these in person. This is Barrier Canyon style rock art, ranging from 2-4,000 years BP. The sunlight was really direct when I visited, which is rotten for taking photos, but hey, if you wanted splashy, go get some postcards.

Large panel view, to get a feel for it. These long figures usually give me the creeps.

This guy looks like he's wearing a bandolier.

This broken panel was brought to you by a mining company in the 1920's, who brilliantly thought they'd be able to use dynamite to remove the panel and...take it home with them? The rest of the panel is in rubble below, but the happy ending is, the destroyed protions have provided lots of material for experimental dating techniques that require stuff like grinding up the rock art ;-)

They tell me that this figure predates all the other flute players and that he's probably holding an atl-atl. I tell them they're thinking with their dicks again. Clearly this guy is rockin' out!

I have a pet theory that the Barrier Canyon style anthropomorphs mimic the shapes of water stains on canyon walls, and that they're guardian figures for each individual canyon. Hey, it's about as informed as any other rock art interpretation.

This ghost figure is extra-super creepy. They also remind me of wrapped up corpses.

EXTREME!

Today I was itching for both a drive and a hike, so I shelved the "landform" mission from Arches NP, and spent a lovely hour singing loudly with the breeze in my hair as I headed to the Needles section of Canyonlands NP. EXTREME!

Yet another scenic photo. I'm sure you guys are sick of these by now, but I just can't get over the fact that this area feels like it was created to by my own personal playground. I couldn't ask for better. Except for maybe a bouncy castle.

Lost Canyon (cue Disney's animatronic haunted house demonic laughter). All this sign needs is a cow skull.

But we'll have to settle for a chillin' lizard instead.

A rather shy blackwidow in her nest near my lunch spot. EXTREME! She must have been feeling bloated or something, because she wasn't about to come out and flash her colors for me.

A ladder that was a necessary part of the hike. EXTREME!