Friday – Sunday, November 22-24, 2024
This weekend I met up with a friend so we could explore some new places surrounding Bears Ears National Monument, although we did end up making our way up onto the edges of Cedar Mesa for a couple of short hikes, too. I left from work on Friday afternoon, grabbed dinner at Milt’s in Moab before they close for the winter, and then continued on towards Blanding where I stopped for an evening photo over Recapture Reservoir before finding a campsite just outside of town and getting to bed early. Then early on Saturday morning I met up with my friend in Blanding and we headed out into the Borderlands of the Bears Ears Country for the rest of the weekend. These are some photos of what we saw.
Recapture Reservoir
Horse Rock Alcove
I’ve always wondered why these were called the Horse Rock Ruins. Now I know…
Horse Rock Ruins
Broken Metate & Mano
Metate & Potsherds
This was an unusual curved wall tucked away in the back of the alcove.
Incised designs carved into the back wall of a shallow alcove.
Reverse Handprint
Here’s an interesting large petroglyph that is hard to see.
Historic drawings found in another nearby alcove.
If you look closely on the right side below this ruin you will notice there are logs jammed into the rock that look like ladder rungs. I’m not sure if they are ancient or historic, but I’ve not seen anything like this before.
I was shocked at how big this alcove was when we first entered Black Bear Cave. It’s huge!
Looking out through the trees that are growing in front of the cave’s opening.
This tree was growing in an unusual way to reach the sunlight outside of the cave.
This is the large black pictograph of a bear painted in the back of the cave.
We were surprised to come across this very large arch during one of our hikes.
Comb Ridge
The last light of the day strikes Comb Ridge as we searched for a campsite on Saturday evening.
A Sunday morning sunrise on Cedar Mesa.
We spent some time checking out these ruins on a ledge.
The light was terrible while we were here, but these white pictographs were very nice.
There wasn’t much left of these mesa-top ruins, but there were a lot of potsherds around.
Two Bears Alcove Ruins
There were some interesting petroglyphs on the wall below this ruin, including two different bears.
This was the larger of the bear petroglyphs.
Bear Petroglyph #2
