Tracking Dinosaurs, Blanding and a New Camp

Bears Ears XI

2024-05-23 & 24

We’ve just spent over a week out in the desert wilderness of Bears Ears National Monument. It has been monumental and we have acquired a compelling interest in the local archeology.

It is time to take a deeper look into our options. We’ll need some gas. Each week we’ll need fresh blocks of ice. We’ll need fresh produce for our microbiology’. Blanding is the most likely source. I’ll need to get on the internet to research where we might go next and get the bills paid. There will be cellphone service there to check on home.

Civilization feels like a return into a strange and busy world.

We arrive in this small town of around 3200. Cracking comments about how “bland it looks,” or, “landing in Blanding.” 

Pulling into a parking lot still naked, we need to dig out the city clothes that are buried somewhere deep in our bags, still unused. I have a pair of shorts and a nice button up shirt in a bag in the rear of the SUV. I find my wrap-around kilt to stay legal while getting out of the driver’s seat.

After digging deep, I slip my shorts up under the kilt. A set of dusty, work-worn cowboys next to a long horse trailer give us a curious disgusted look. “Yup, not from around here. Ain’t right.” They have been obviously out in the wilds, collecting cattle and are looking for a burger and fries. DF pulls on a cover-up, and then getting back into the truck, she changes.

I suppose that we are now ready for civilization, “You got money? We need money here.”

After our days ranging freely, this feels excessive to be dressed in less comfortable fashionable cloths, even these casual garments. It is easy to get distracted from this, but then, I’ll find myself sitting wriggling less comfortably, or feeling bundled up, or hot and missing the natural air all over.

The local restaurants are a couple of old school fast-food establishments. One is an A&W in the bowling alley and the other, a fun mom and pop old school drive-in. There is a pharmacy and across the street, a small movie theater, which is next to one of the best Ace Hardware stores that I have experienced. It’s a general store of sorts.

Small town jaywalking across the slow open street is easy and natural. In-between, I take my girl out for ice cream. Two flavors are ordered and the Huckleberry is like a delicious delicacy. We look and find a nice clean orderly campground, just out of town. There is laundry and internet. Above all, there is treasure of treasures, unlimited hot water showers.

Friday, we discover that the one supermarket has surprisingly many organic and specialty items. We figure without restaurants, this may be the alternative, or could the organic treats be on the shelves for tourists?

On the other side of town, a short distance, there is a tourist center. I continue my digging for information and planning. I compare internet information on my laptop with what I can glean from tourist information and the local informative attendant. The satellite images on Google Maps give some needed detail.

There is time for a museum. Fresh off of the lost city discovery thrill, we want to find more about the local prehistoric peoples. We find this to be a world class exhibit.

There are many exhibits detailing the various styles of pottery, their makers and the time periods that evolution in design covers.  This will help us when we are finding chards in the wilderness.

Already, there are many descriptions of people living in a society that gives us a wealth of clues to apply to the architecture that we will encounter in the coming weeks. For example:

Previously, petroglyphs and pictographs have been a mystery and to a great degree still are, but here, the research has found much more insight. I buy a book and take notes with my cell phone.

A particular artifact is this feather sash.

The Aztec way that it was made suggests that it was traded from deep in Mexico. These are from Mexican Scarlet Macaws. This garment was dated back to 1150 A.D. The locals kept birds, including turkeys, as did many of the other Southwestern tribes.

There is a room with Plexiglas walls that drops my jaw. It is packed with examples of pottery.

Perhaps the largest display in the western United States is here. It is art, it is history and it is a categorization of trends. I’ve never seen such a collection of complete pieces.

Stepping out back through two large doors, we find that the museum is placed next to an ancient archeological site. A true pueblo of size was here. It has a huge room for at least fifty people to gather. We find that this may have been a center of culture, or governance for the region. From here on out, we will be considering the styles and proximity of the ruins that we visit to this collection of structures.

There is one re-constructed traditional kiva. We climb down its ladder and back into time, into a circular room with ledges, fire pit, air circulation system and earthen floor.

One notion, which is new to me, is seeing a wide road next to the complex. They could be used for various reasons, but now, remnants of roads are something else to discover. Foot racing was a big deal all over the old native territories. The distance from the outlying ruins where we are looking, to this central complex, would be much shorter, just because of the culture of human running. The lifestyle components here are still practiced by the Tarahumara in the Copper Canyon of Mexico.

I am now fortified with books, photos of exhibits and pamphlets. I find myself excited for more of this archeological experience, ready to better understand what was going on, to touch it, walk amongst it, attempt to feel how people’s lives proceeded. I want the experience augmented by the way they generally lived, naked with a relationship with nature.

Throughout the trip, we will visit numerous ancient sites, applying the knowledge that we have accumulated to our experiences. We will be learning and projecting ourselves into the past in a most tactile way. As this series continues, I’ll be incorporating that experience into the narrative.  I want to know how peoples of the past lived naturally and healthy. I’d like to creatively apply some of that to my own current life and just maybe become more synchronized with the gift of the Earth, which we have sprung from. I want to imaginatively project myself into a sense of the past.

Driving out of Blanding toward the next Bears Ears destination, we see the ominous sign for the first time, “Next Services 121 Miles.”

 

E-Yabba dabba doo!:

 

We pull off of the two lane highway as two tourists out to see what the dinosaur tracks in my guide book are about. Immediately, this becomes a dirt road. Soon beside it, stands a simple kiosk and a trail to… …something. We read and decide to take the walk. It is very short, a few hundred feet.

There is nobody around. We hear very little sound at all. We’ll likely hear cars pulling up at the kiosk and down the road, so we don’t need to put clothing on.

I’m surprised to see that we end up in the middle of the same dirt road, just further down. Just a few feet off of the shoulder, in the bend that runs through a dry wash, there is a bedrock slab lying uncovered.

Yabba dabba doo! Embedded in the rock, there are a few rather large prints tracking across. These guys were big; big feet and a big stride. It is a stretch to imitate it.

I feel small.

This experience does give me a taste and a desire to visit the Dinosaur Museum in Blanding, next week.

Days before, I had suspected what looked like tracks out at Muley point. They weren’t large; after all, dinos were not all huge, the big guys had to eat something besides each other. This cluster of marks looked like they could have been left in mud, while a group was drinking, possibly a vestigium of life long ago.

Well, we have a camp to find and get settled into today. There is no time to dawdle. We can just walk back up the road naked. However, when we arrive and climb into our SUV, another car pulls up next to us. This requires a quick cover-up, just in case, a smile and a wave.

Back at the stop sign at the main road, there is the sound of some Velcro and we cast cloth aside, correcting the vestiges of the vestigial for our vest-less cruise down the two lane highway.

We arrive at Arch Creek:

This is Friday, the beginning of Labor Day weekend. We are expecting a few more people around us and maybe, a lack of elbow room.

As we come out of the deep cut pass through the Comb Ridge, the verdant valley below is populated by numerous travel trailers, large RV’s and flatbed haulers filled with ATV’s and quads. It IS Labor Day!

We are hoping to get away from this on the other side of the highway and even use some 4X4 to find some seclusion.

Arriving at the trailhead in time, there is still some later afternoon light. It is very dusty and no private spots can be seen, but we soon are happy to discover a spot under the shade of a large cottonwood tree.

There is an interesting wall of rock to the east.

The neighbors to the west are in ruin. Right next door, there are three walls of stone making a rectangular Indian ruin! Ghosts don’t care.

Oddly, there are piles of camping equipment in the nearby camping spots with no owners to be seen. We figure that some locals have left it here in advance to reserve, or claim, these two precious Labor Day crowd refuges.

If locals think that it is good, then that says something about it. The problem is that that means that we will have neighbors later. We set the SUV, tent and chairs to block the view. Anyone would have to walk right up to us to know how we are dressed, or not. We shall have nude use and some privacy whenever the others arrive.

There is a lone man in a truck loaded with a camper sitting on a knoll above us. I check the angles of vision with the bushy foliage between us and him and it helps. The guy’s campfire is situated on the other side of his rig with a narrow walking spot on each side of the truck. He apparently uses the driver’s side more often, as he has left more space there to walk and little space on the otherside. There is a sun screen in the window and consequently, he is blocking his own view of our campsite. He values the privacy himself.  

Taking a walk to explore, we become disappointed to find that the creek’s passage is too messed up for anyone, but maybe an ATV, or a lifted setup for climbing rocks. It is a serious, steep and muddy climb out of the creek, a bumper buster. People are standing around lamenting the situation, stumped. This appears to be the only way to drive back into the canyon.

Those standing around say that they are here because they had heard that the canyon will soon be shut off from vehicular traffic to preserve it. They see this as a last chance. There is a strong sense of disappointment.

I have had enough experience in the back roads to know that often the old roads don’t just go in and out of the creeks. Often, they will actually go right up the shallow creek-beds.  We take a walk and discover that sure enough, the old road does go up the creek, not just around and dipping through it.  Apparently, nobody knows this, but a perhaps a few. I speculate that in the morning, we will have the canyon pretty much to ourselves, while the crowds find other places to play.

Tomorrow, the plan is to pack up and drive the 12 mile canyon and then make another camp. There are a few ruins on the way, according to my book and map. At that point, there are three canyons, all with trails and likely streams, which stem off of the main canyon. We can hike one each day, nude. It is far from authority, a 4×4 road, and probably sparsely shared. Hopefully all that we will see is day trippers in ATV’s and on quads, which will likely drive up to the trailhead at the big arch and drive back.

I walk further up the road to get a feel for its condition. It is thin, winding through a dense jungle of trees. It bends in and out of the creek. At one point it is eroding. I’ll be careful tomorrow.

I manage to carry my kilt in my hand for a nice nude walk in a friendly canyon.

Shadows getting longer, we set up camp, have a nice meal and explore our more immediate surroundings.

There is still no sign of the neighbors. We climb up the huge and colorful rock formations surrounding our camp, finding the seclusion to disrobe and feel the evening air.

I am now always looking for ruins, etc. This is a mound of rock, a hill maybe sixty feet high. So when we find the top, we have a beautiful 360 degree view. I get an orientation to the terrain that can lead to several explorations, at least ten ancient sites.

The distant walls of the comb are lit up in golden orange, the whitish rocky slope to the west turns blue and shadows become immense. As the show winds down, we see lights up on top of the slope high above. Soon a group of ATV’s come down single file, probably taking in the sunset with cocktails and having a fun drive. It looks like no actual road and a treacherous route. One seems to go first, knowing and leading the way, then the others follow him. I think that we may have discovered an extra hike to go along with a dozen others. Tomorrow, it all begins….

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