Yeah, it was a long day and we saw a lot (click here to see the last adventure we had -
Flaming Gorge Dam. Memorial Day 2019 trip, part 7) but we
were
still far from calling it a day and the future was a bit hazy for us.
We
left the dam and drove back. But again, our path was not direct and took
longer than one can expect. When we got to Vernal, we made a
turn to explore another ancient spot... Not as old as the rocks in the
Sheep Creek Geological Area but still quite old.
There
are many places in Utah and Colorado where
petroglyphs can be found. And mostly they are very similar. Some
well known symbols (even though we mostly don't know their meaning),
common animals,
stick figures. Everything is rather schematic and looks like drafts. The
only place where the petroglyphs are different is the place where we
were heading ;). This place is somehow unique and the
pictures carved in the rocks are different
there. They are more
detailed and mostly show people. Just a couple of animals and very few
symbols. And the images of people are not schematic, but rich and
illustrative. You may even see
some emotions (people crying or laughing) and relationships (images of
two people holding hands is incredibly rare). And something else
but we will talk about this later.
No one can
say how old these petroglyphs are. All that is known is that they were created
sometimes between 0 and 1200 AC. Pretty vague, I know... The petroglyphs are located on the
rock wall about 20 miles from Vernal on private land called
McConkie Ranch. All you have to do is just leave your car in the parking lot (nice fence decoration,
by the way) and climb just a few hundred feet to find some outstanding
images.
The most interesting, as I said above, are the details. The faces,
head decoration and some groups called headhunters (but they have nothing to do with recruiters). How else can you call people who hold
the heads in their hands... It is not known whether these are pictures of a war, or
a ritual, or anything else. But some of the heads had some red ink where the necks were before the people were beheaded. So, probably,
a bloody ceremony or big victory is shown here. Who knows... There are many theories, but nothing is certain.
One of the few depictions of animals is that of a man hunting a bear. It is located
quite high and you can easily miss it if your eye trained on the lower
part of the wall.
Some of the images are hard to see, but some are still
bright and easy to find.
We spent a couple of hours walking along the wall and solving this
riddle... We definitely would have stayed there longer, but we were
tired, baked by the hot sun and we still had about three hours to
get to the town where we planned to spend the night so that.. we left
without finding an answer.
We left Utah shortly as well (sorry to show the Welcome sign, but we figured out they don't have the Farewell sign ;) ) and
enjoyed a drive along the Yampa river, where fields were bright and lush
and these views made our path much more pleasant...
To be continued...
The pictures were taken on May 26, 2019.
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