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Please click here for – Part Six
A Return to Utah, Continued
I love stories and this is a good one. A marvelous canyon cuts through the San Rafael Reef. In the 1940’s a man outlined a pictograph with chalk, a pictograph that he believed was of a flying dragon. The canyon became known as Black Dragon Canyon. Later, a geologist claimed it looked like a pterodactyl.Young Earth Creationists latched onto the story (and pictograph) as proof that indigenous people lived with dinosaurs. This is a great story and it fits firmly into the category of, “You can’t make this stuff up.” Very different from the story of a flying saucer crash site.
A primitive road runs down the wash, but we decided, when we reached the narrow entrance to Black Dragon Canyon, it would be so much better to walk.
In a shadowed bend of the canyon steer cliffs rose above us.
DStretch, again, helps bring out details.
Using chalk to outline or highlight rock art was once done but is now a forbidden technique. Please never touch or alter rock art in any way. Unfortunately, besides the dragon, many of the pictographs here were outlined in chalk in the past.
………..and the Black Dragon
It does look like a pterodactyl and the fellow with the chalk outlined it to support what he believed he saw.
But it is not. This is one mystery that new techniques, such as DStretch, solved.
The dragon pictograph is a grouping of several images. The right wing is a horned snake with a large head and open jaws. The head and beak of the dragon is a man with outstretched arms. The main torso and legs is another man bent and holding something in his outstretched arms, possibly a killed sheep? The far end of the left wing is a small bighorn sheep.
Here is a link to the story - Controversial interpretations of the Black Dragon Pictograph
There is so, so much more here in Black Dragon Canyon – one of the most elaborate and detailed panel of pictographs we have seen.
Vida and Della will forever live in infamy.
The canyon walls also hold petroglyphs.
After our incredible visit to Black Dragon Canyon, we drove south on Temple Mountain Road through Sinbad Country. At the southern end, as it approaches its intersection with highway 24, Temple Mountain appears. Here is a dreary, hazy, midday photo.
After three incredible nights and campsites in Utah with no one else around, things changed dramatically. We expected it, but we were still shocked. As we neared highway 24 the area was covered (an exaggeration but felt like it) with people and vehicles of all kinds. My god. We each took a deep breath. We had a couple of places we wished to visit.
The Temple Mountain Wash Pictograph Panel
These figures are very large with the tallest one at six feet.
It is sad and disgusting that the pictographs have been used as targets.
Our second destination was Wild Horse Canyon. We located the entrance to it off of the main wash. It begins with a short section of tight narrows.
The canyon opens up but the rock remains striking.
The Lady spotted the alcove, high up on the canyon wall, we were searching for.
It was a steep exposed friction climb up the sandstone and then a couple of climbing moves to enter the alcove. The views were great.
But what we were looking for was inside the alcove.
DStretch helps with these pictographs.
This was the Lady’s favorite rock art site of this trip because of the climb required to access it. She loves to climb.
Late afternoon light was on the canyon walls as we hiked back out to our truck, parked on the edge of a sea of huge motorhomes.
We headed out a narrow two track, hoping to find a spot distant enough to get us some solitude and privacy. After passing a few vanlifers and with the last small trailer over a quarter mile away, we found a nice spot overlooking the entrance into a canyon. We were alone.
The Lady was getting dinner ready. I was sitting just outside the camper looking at our Utah Benchmark mapbook. We were leaving Utah the next day and we were planning our route.
I heard a man’s voice right beside me. He asked, “Do you know where you are?”
“I believe I do,” I answered. “I’m studying the Utah book here.” I held it up for him to see. “I’m in Utah, is that right?” I honestly thought he was making a bit of fun because I was looking at the book so intently.
“Yeah,” he answered, “But I have no idea where I am.”
The gray-haired man was lean and fit and looked like he spent a lot of time outdoors. He was standing beside his mountain bike.
“I came down this canyon. It’s a beautiful canyon. I saw your camper up here so I walked my bike up here. I don’t know where I am and how to get back to my camp.”
I listened to his story. He had been out on his bike most of the day. Putting the pieces of his story together, I determined he was less than a mile from his camp and gave him directions on how to get there. It would be straightforward and easy, as would be the bike ride. He shared several stories about areas he’s visited over the years, then thanked us, and was on his way.
For our evening walk we climbed up the ridgeline that gave nice views into the canyon and beyond.
We slept well that night until midnight.
We both woke with a start. A truck had driven into our camp and was stopped, idling a few feet from the front of our truck. Its headlights were on bright. It moved a few feet to start down the steep drop into the canyon and wisely stopped and backed up. It then started up a steep short spur track to a small high point right above us. There were no tire tracks on this spur showing use and it was something I would never drive up without walking first, especially at night. The truck reached the end a few yards up and then made a several point turn to turn around and ended up with its blinding headlights directly on our camper. Someone got out and was busy above the camper – turns out digging holes to put the uphill tires in to attempt to level the truck. It backed 90° and settled into the holes and finally doused the lights.
“What do you think?” the Lady asked. “Should we be concerned?”
“I’d say it’s 98% chance they are just dumb and inconsiderate, 2% they’re up to no good. It did not sound like the truck’s running well. I expect it’s a kid in a beater Toyota pickup.”
I stayed awake for around an hour, listening for any noises that concerned me. There were none and I fell back asleep.
The next morning I saw that I was wrong about the beater Toyota pickup.
The Lady was beside me outside before sunup. The coffee mugs were full.
“Have you seen any movement from them?” she asked.
“No, nothing,” I replied. “You’d think, since they parked so damn close, at least they could provide us some entertainment. I’ve been watching.”
“Let’s go for a walk up the canyon,” the Lady replied.
The vehicle was gone when we returned from our walk. We again encountered this vehicle two days later in Nevada. It was a young couple with an infant child and a large dog. They were from Florida. They were clueless about how inconsiderate they were.
We made the mistake of driving through Fruita and Capital Reef National Park and got stuck in horrendous stop and go traffic. Every turn out and trailhead was overflowing with people and vehicles. I could grouse about the good old days, but I won’t. The good old days are, obviously, dead and gone.
It was nice to be back on empty open roads after the Park. We had one more stop to make before settling into a camp for the night.
We were thrilled to have finally found aspen with fall colors. And, to top it off, on the world’s largest tree. The Latin word “pando” translates to “I spread,” a fitting name for a clone.
More information on the Pando Grove can be found here – Friends of Pando.
About 15 minutes outside of Delta, Utah, we found a comfortable, small, quiet USFS campground. It was near empty with only one other campsite occupied, by a nice couple from Cedar City. The Bigtooth Maples were getting into their red fall colors.
The canyon walls glowed with the light of the setting sun.
The time we spent in Utah was amazing, but we hardly even put a dent in all the items on “the list.” That could probably take a lifetime.
The next morning, after plugging a hole in a tire the Lady discovered while doing her “walkaround” before starting up the truck, we headed into Nevada for a few days in Great Basin National Park.
Our adventure continues. Please click here for - Part Eight.
We also stopped at the Pando Grove. There was snow on the ground October 12th. Looks like everything got a dusting the night before. I was a cold 31 degrees.
ReplyDeletePando Grove is a nice spot! It was great to see you and Veronica at Great Basin National Park.
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