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Tag: ancestral puebloan

Cedar Mesa Chronicles: Chapter 14

Friday – Sunday, February 21-23, 2025

After returning home from northeastern Arizona on Monday, I decided to take it easier this weekend and return to the canyons of Cedar Mesa to walk a few sections of the canyons. While I was hoping to find a few new ruins and rock art sites along the way, I also took the time to return to a canyon I have hiked many times before so I could revisit some sites that I hadn’t been back to in over a decade and wanted to see again. The weather was very nice all weekend, perfect for hiking and camping, and I had a nice time walking in the canyons. These are some photos from my weekend on Cedar Mesa.

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Tapamveni: Rock Art of the Petrified Forest & Beyond

Presidents Day Weekend | Thursday – Monday, February 13-17, 2025

This year for the extended Presidents Day weekend I took an extra day off from work so I could spend four days in and around Petrified Forest National Park hiking and searching for petroglyphs. As I was driving across the Navajo Nation through a storm on Thursday evening I was a little bit worried that the rain would muddy up the roads I needed to drive and alter my plans, but I lucked out and all the roads were somehow completely dry during the remainder of the weekend. The only weather I would only have to deal with was a constant and brutal wind on Friday that made holding my binoculars and camera steady a real challenge at times. Aside from hiking to new places and finding many new petroglyphs along the way, I also revisited a couple of sites that I wanted to search more thoroughly. These are some photos from my holiday weekend in the Palavayu.

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Poking Around the Pockets of Horse Canyon

Canyonlands National Park | Saturday & Sunday, February 1-2, 2025

With warmer than seasonal temperatures and overall nice weather expected across the Colorado Plateau this weekend, I thought this would be a great time to get back into the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park for the first time this year. Since we’ve had a pretty dry winter so far this season and the road into Horse Canyon was actually open, I also thought this would be a great opportunity to get back into that elusive canyon. I met up with a friend on Saturday morning and we spent the entire weekend poking around the pockets of Horse Canyon to see what we would find along the way…

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Borderlands of the Bears Ears Country III

Saturday & Sunday, January 25-26, 2025

Even though Diane had just returned home on Wednesday after spending a week-and-a-half in Hawaii at a conference for work and hadn’t even finished unpacking from the trip, she was ready to join me in the much colder temperatures of southern Utah this weekend so we could explore the canyons found around the edges of the Bears Ears National Monument together. We left home early on Saturday morning and then spent the rest of the weekend wandering through some canyons along the Borderlands of the Bears Ears Country in search of ruins and rock art. These are just some photos of what we saw.

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Below the Bears Ears: Thanksgiving Weekend 2024

Cedar Mesa Chronicles: Chapter 13 | Thursday – Sunday, November 28 – December 1, 2024

This year for the extended Thanksgiving holiday weekend Diane and I returned to the landscape surrounding the Bears Ears and spent all four days wandering a selection of canyons and rims carved into Cedar Mesa and beyond. Our time was split between searching for new sites and revisiting sites that I hadn’t been back to in over a decade but were mostly new to Diane. We saw quite a bit more rock art this time around with only a few ruins scattered throughout our hikes. In the end we had another great weekend exploring one of our favorite places together and look forward to returning again and again. These are some photos of what we saw.

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