Parowan Gap

"The Zipper" at Parowan Gap

This past Saturday, my wife and I were in Cedar City to see a couple of plays at the Shakespeare Festival.  With some free time in the morning, we opted for a trip out to Parowan Gap to see the petroglyphs there.  It was worth the trip, though I wish I had brought a real camera.  Instead I had to rely on the iPhone for the photos here.

Dinosaur National Mounument Rock Art

Figure from the panel at Cub Creek in Dinosaur National Monument

In mid-August, I took a trip to Dinosaur National Monument with my two youngest children.  We visited three of the 5 well-known rock art sites in the park: Swelter Shelter, Cub Creek and Pool Creek.

Fremont Indian State Park

Sheep Petroglyphs at Fremont Indian State Park in Utah

Fremont Indian State Park is located alongside I-70 in Sevier County, Utah.  The site was discovered in the 1980's when the interstate was constructed in Clear Creek Canyon.  This site was the largest collection of Fremont houses at a single site ever discovered in the state of Utah.  Sadly, most of these were destroyed in the construction.  However there was a great deal of archeological work done and Fremont Indian State Park was created in 1987 to preserve what was left.

'Winged Monster' Rock Art Finally Deciphered

I woke up to this news at Real Clear Science today. This is pretty cool.

'Winged Monster' Rock Art Finally Deciphered

Black Dragon Canyon is one of my favorite rock art sites. It's named after a winged figure that early rock art aficionados thought they saw and then outlined with chalk.

"I myself visited the site in person a few years ago," said Phil Senter, an associate professor of biology at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina, who was not associated with the study. "There's no pterodactyl there at all. It's a collection of other images."

This has been known for quite a while, but the images they were able to tease out of DStretch (see earlier post here) are stunning.

from the article

Familiar Motifs

I visited the U.S. Museum of the American Indian in Washington yesterday morning (April 4, 2015) and ran across this work of art on the third floor that contains lots of the same motifs one finds in Utah rock art.

Colorado River Near Moab

Panel along the Banks of the Colorado downstream from Moab

Last June I had a visitor in town and took him down to Dead Horse State Park and Canyonlands National Park.  We drove back down the Shaffer Trail, past the potash ponds and along the Colorado River.

Rock Art Tour of the Swell

DStretch enhanced photo from Buckhorn Draw August 2014

I took a quick rock art tour of the San Rafael Swell last Saturday with a couple of friends.  We didn't hit any new sites, but revisited Rochester Creek, Moore Cutoff, Short Canyon, Black Dragon Canyon and Buckhorn Draw.