Arches and Ancesteral Puebloans

I am writing this from the comfort of my kitchen in Phoenix. Two days ago we pulled into Moab, UT and checked out Arches National Park. Our orginal intention was to spend one day at Arches and one day at Canyonlands NP. That was not to be, because we found out that the town of Moab itself is filled with ancient Anasazi wrtings called petroglyphs and pictographs, and we really wanted to see these, so yesterday we spent the first half of the day back at Arches--where all 6 kids got Junior Ranger badges--and the second half of the day touring the town to see the ancient writings. One sad thing we noted all over town is that most of the ancient writings have been vandalized over the years and sadly, right next to a petroglyph that might be from 2000 BC, you have grafitti from some idiot who scratched their initials in back in '75. The picture you see here I took in the Arches Park right past the Wolfe Ranch. Because this one is in a protected National Park, it is in very good shape, and also, this particluar slab is not that old. These petroglyphs are from sometime after the Spaniards arrived in the area and reintroduced horses to the contient. (Notice the guy on his horse in the upper left corner.) This could have been put here anytime between 1200 AD and 1800 AD--there is no way to date it precicely--but they can use the content of the pictures to help them determine when it was put there (in this case the Indian on the horese.) Also different times, produced different styles of art.

Last night we drove from Moab all the way to Phoenix. It was past 4am when we finally arrived at home. Charlie cleaned out the camper this morning and as I type I am running one of what will amount to about 5 loads of laundry, and Charlie is taking the camper back to the place we rent to store it. I'm getting bleary eyed, so shortly I'm going to put Claire in for a nap.

I have lots of reflections on this vacation and over the coming weeks as I process it all mentally, I will post my thoughts--what I liked best and least, what I would do differently next time etc... I also purchased four books on subjects pertinent to the vacation, and I will respond to those books here as well.

Thank you to all of you who read this blog. It was fun reading your comments and emails. It was also fun posting to this blog, and recording what we were doing.