September 25-30, 2007 - We rushed south to get away from the snow
and cold in Park City and found the perfect temperatures in the
Green River area. The San Rafael Swell is a vast area of redrocks
and desert brush that we explored for several days. The rock cliffs
are enormous.
We found rock faces that sported pictographs painted by ancient
peoples 2000 years ago. Pictographs are made using some kind of
paint on the rock, but it impregnates the rock face enough to last over
thousands of years. It may have been made using saliva or blood.
The images were mystical. The people were tall and thin with
garments that reached to the ground. It was hard to tell what they
were doing, but in one image all the people had holes pecked in
their chests. Apparently the holes were pecked deliberately,
though researchers don't know what they represented.
We also found petroglyphs chiseled in the rocks by ancient peoples
1000 years ago. The images were a little more real-life. Elk and big
horn sheep were easy to distinguish.
One image was a little mystifying,
however: the figure had four fingers,
three toes, antennae and either a tail
or a shield in the other hand. There
is graffiti around many of these rock
images, and the poor quality of the
modern rock doodles makes it clear
that the rock artists spent some time
and had some skill in making these
images last.
Further on we found a dinosaur track
(the guidebook helped us find it!).
Whatever type of dinosaur it
belonged to was very good sized.
Mark's hand disappeared into the footprint.
We drove through an area called "Jackass Flats" and, sure enough,
we saw three burros nibbling the grass. They came right over to us
to check us out. Eventually they decided we weren't all that
interesting, and they wandered off.
Back out on I-70 we stopped at the north end of Spotted Wolf
Pass. It took 13 years to build this portion of I-70 through the
rock cliffs. It takes five minutes to drive through it.
From there we dropped down to Goblin Valley, Utah.