Dinosaur National Monument | Wandering through Time and Place

Tag: Dinosaur National Monument
- Dinosaur National Monument… A Photographic Journey through America’s National Parks
  
  Posted at 5:00 am by Curt Mekemson
  
  Dec 1st
  
  Dinosaur National Monument is filled with quiet beauty.
  
  Located on the border between Colorado and Utah, Dinosaur National Monument is known for it’s large deposit of Dinosaur Bones. The Park also features a quiet beauty and an interesting collection of Native American petroglyphs. The Yampa and Green Rivers snake their way through the canyons of the park and attract white-water rafting enthusiasts– including several of my friends.
  
  So there is a little bit of something for everyone in this little known National Monument. Hopefully, this blog will encourage some of my readers to visit. You won’t regret the decision.
  
  Bright asters decorated the roadside on our way into camp.
  
  This person with his/her large hands and dogs is one of my favorite petroglyphs.
  
  Shadows stretch across the Green River while the evening sun gently bathes the cliffs above in light. Not a bad view from our camp!
  
  This large dinosaur bone was sticking out the edge of a cliff.
  
  I thought this Native American petroglyph was particularly appropriate for the park.
  
  Rock monuments are given names in Dinosaur National Monument, as they are throughout the West. What would you name this? The local answer is below.
  
  Peggy sits beside a series of petroglyphs we found high above the road.
  
  An alien petroglyph?
  
  A final scene from our campsite.
  
  The monument was named Elephant Toes. NEXT BLOG: The incredible rocks of Bryce Canyon National Park.
  
  Posted in National Parks | Tagged Dinosaur National Monument, Elephant Toes Rock at Dinosaur National Monument, petroglyphs, petroglyphs at Dinosaur National Monument, photographs of Dinosaur National Monument, Photographs of National Parks.
- It’s National Park Week 2013… April 20-28
  
  Posted at 5:00 am by Curt Mekemson
  
  Apr 26th
  
  Bryce Canyon National Park, Utah
  
  It’s National Park Week. One of my blogging friends reminded me. Somehow I lost track of time and became so wrapped up in the minutia of life that the week had arrived before I realized it was happening. Shame on me.
  
  The United States and many other nations around the world have done a magnificent job of setting aside national parks. We owe it to ourselves to go out and explore these treasures. And, we owe it to our great, great, great, great-grandchildren to protect these sites of rare natural beauty for future generations.
  
  It won’t be easy. There will always be people who believe financial gain outweighs any other consideration. Why save thousand-year-old redwood trees when they can be turned into highly profitable redwood decks?
  
  This 1500 year old redwood is located in Redwoods National Park on the northern coast of California.
  
  Several years ago, Peggy and I set a goal to visit all of America’s National Parks. With the exception of Kobuk Valley and Lake Clark in Alaska, we’ve succeeded. It has been an incredible journey. Our travels have taken us from Denali National Park in Alaska to the Dry Tortugas National Park off the Florida Keys.
  
  In addition to driving through and hiking in these parks, I have also backpacked in 13, biked through five, and kayaked or rafted in three. Once I even organized a winter ski trek into Denali National Park where we slept out in minus 30-degree weather and listened to wolves howl. That was a learning experience…
  
  Since I couldn’t escape to a national park this week, I did the next best thing; I went through photos of parks Peggy and I have taken. All I could think of was wow– what incredible beauty!
  
  Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.
  An active volcano in Hawaii Volcanos National Park on the Island of Hawaii.
  Grand Tetons National Park in Wyoming. A sign warned us to look out for an active grizzly bear.
  Arches National Park, Utah
  Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park, California. I once woke up near here with a bear standing on top of me.
  Fall colors of Shenandoah National Park in Virginia.
  Sand dunes in Death Valley National Park.
  The green of Olympic National Park in Washington.
  Lesser known national parks such as Great Basin in Nevada also hold great charm and beauty. This photo features the van Peggy and I travelled in for four years as we wandered around North America.
  
  Spectacular scenery is only part of the national park story. Wildlife, birds, insects, reptiles, flowers and history add to the experience.
  
  Peggy and I found this beauty swimming through the water at Everglades National Park in Florida.
  And this striking Black Buzzard was another Everglades resident.
  We found this Luna Moth on the Natchez Trace National Parkway.
  Brown Pelicans are common visitors at Pt. Reyes National Seashore.
  Peggy and I are great fans of Native America rock art, much of which is protected in national parks and at national monuments. We have several thousand photos from different sites. This one from Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado/Utah has always been a favorite because of the big hands and fat little dogs.
  It never hurts to complete a blog with a pretty flower, even if it goes on and on. (grin) We found this Foxglove growing in Olympic National Park.
  
  NEXT BLOG: I hope you have enjoyed my two diversions over the past week because of Earth Day and National Park Week. On Monday I will return to Europe and Rome’s historic Colosseum.
  
  Posted in National Parks | Tagged Arches National Park, Bryce National Park, Death Valley National Park, Dinosaur National Monument, Everglades National Park, Grand Tetons National Park, Great Basin National Park, Hawaii Volcanos National Park, National Park Week, Olympic National Park, Pt. Reyes national Sea Shore, Redwoods National Park, Rocky Mountains National Park, Shenandoah National Park, Yosemite National Park
- Cub Creek Petroglyphs… Dinosaur National Monument
  
  Posted at 11:49 am by Curt Mekemson
  
  Jul 21st
  
  Like much Indian rock-art, Cub Creek petroglyphs in Dinosaur National Monument raise intriguing questions. It would be fascinating to know the story behind this unique anthropomorphic figure. What do the lines stretching toward the sky represent?
  
  Peggy and I crossed over the Green River in Dinosaur National Monument and followed the road toward the cabin of Josie Basset Morris, the tough old pioneer woman who had worked her way through five husbands and finally discovered she preferred living alone.
  
  The river, mountains and distant vistas entertained us along the way. Two prominent landmarks, Elephant Toes and Turtle Rock, lived up to the names the early settlers had bestowed on them. I found the big toes particularly amusing.
  
  Elephant Toes Rock in Dinosaur National Monument along the Cub Creek Road.
  
  While not as humorous as Elephant Toes, the turtle of Turtle Rock is easy to see. Both Native Americans and pioneers were quick to see and name familiar figures in the landscape.
  
  The true surprise on our way to Josie’s, however, was the Indian rock-art. Huge six-foot lizards had been pecked into the cliff faces high above the Cub Creek Valley. One can only wonder if the Native Americans of the Fremont Culture had somehow made the correlation between dinosaur bones found throughout Dinosaur National Monument and really big lizards. Or did small lizards so prominent in desert environment serve as the models?
  
  Our van, Quivera, provides perspective on how high up in the cliffs the Cub Creek petroglyphs are.
  
  Giant, six-foot long, rock-art lizards work their way up the rock face at Cub Creek. Are they representative of the dinosaur bones Native Americans found at Dinosaur National Monument?
  
  Or did the giant petroglyph lizards represent the small lizards so prominent in the arid regions of the West?
  
  Numerous other petroglyphs also demanded our attention. We even found a partial image of Kokopelli, the hunch backed flute player found in ancient rock-art from Mexico to Canada and whose image has been applied on everything from jewelry, to blankets, to pottery in today’s gift shops throughout the West. Kokopelli was both a musician and trickster god, but mainly he was a fertility deity known for his for his bad behavior. Watch out fair maidens one and all.
  
  My wife Peggy admires a small section of the numerous petroglyphs found at the Indian rock-art site on Cub Creek in Dinosaur National Monument.
  
  A partial petroglyph of the flute playing Kokopelli is found at the Cub Creek Indian rock-art site. Odds are he is luring young maidens with his music.
  
  Geometric forms are common in rock-art. This galaxy-like representation caught my attention.
  
  I selected this particular photo because it demonstrates how dark rock varnish has been chipped away in the petroglyph process to reveal the lighter colored rock underneath.
  
  An early day smiley? This guy appears to me to be all mouth and legs but it’s creator likely had something else in mind.
  
  Greetings Earthlings. Check out the dangling ear rings and necklace on this guy. Jewelry apparently was quite important to early Native Americans and may have represented an individuals importance or clan. You will probably note the prominent anatomy as well. Genitalia was often included on Indian rock-art until the Spanish Missionaries informed the natives that such display was sinful.
  
  I call this petroglyph Big Boy.
  
  Posted in National Parks | Tagged Cub Creek Dinosaur National Monument, Cub Creek Petroglyphs, Dinosaur National Monument, Green River, Indian rock-art, Josie Basset Morris, Kokopelli, rock varnish, trickster
- The Ancient World of Indian Rock Art… On the Road
  
  Posted at 7:31 pm by Curt Mekemson
  
  Jul 15th
  
  My wife Peggy and I have travelled throughout the western United States visiting and photographing Native American rock-art. We found this petroglyph of a cougar in the Three Rivers Petroglyph National Recreation Site of southern new Mexico.
  
  I grew up in the town of Diamond Springs, California located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
  
  Once upon a time Diamond had been known as Mo-lok’epakan, or, Morning Star’s Spring. It was a very holy place to the Maidu Indians. They came from miles around bearing their dead on litters for cremation.
  
  Apparently the Maidu had been living in the area for a thousand years. It is a sad commentary on both our education system and how we treated the Indians that I grew up never hearing the name Morning Star’s Spring much less Mo-lok’epakan.
  
  Our only connection with the Maidu’s lost heritage was finding an occasional arrowhead or Indian bead.
  
  The thrill of finding arrowheads, however, led to a lifelong fascination with the culture of Native Americans. Over the past ten years that fascination has led me to an interest in Indian rock-art or petroglyphs and pictographs. Petroglyphs are pecked or scraped from dark, rock varnish exposing a lighter color underneath. Pictographs are painted on rocks.
  
  Indian rock-art is found at thousands of locations throughout the Western United States often near water or unique landmarks. Searching for rock-art is often like a treasure hunt. Here you can spot a group of petroglyphs on the left about a third of the way up the rock.
  
  Peggy and I have explored and photographed major rock-art sites throughout the western US. Today I will introduce Sego Canyon located in eastern Utah off of I-70 near the small town of Thompson. Later I will blog about other sites such as the Three Rivers Petroglyph National Recreation Site of New Mexico.
  
  What captured me about Sego Canyon is the unique, almost ethereal rock-art of the archaic peoples, and the fact that the rock-art represents three distinctive Native American cultures ranging over 8000 years.
  
  The pictographs featured below were made by archaic hunter-gatherer nomads who wandered across western North America between 6000 and 100 BC. Rock art is classified according to various styles and this particular style is known as Barrier Canyon. Its attributes include life-size, man-like creatures with hollow eyes, missing arms, antennae, and lots of snakes. The theory is that the figures may have represented shamanistic journeys to the underworld. I am voting for encounters with aliens… just kidding.
  
  This rock-art, which is found in Sego Canyon, Utah, was created sometime between 6000 and 100 AD. It is classified as the Barrier Canon style. Note the hollow eye sockets, antennae, horns and snakes.
  
  This is a close up showing images from the above photo. There is some thought that these figures reflect shamanistic visits to the underworld but one can understand why UFO fans might think they represent encounters with aliens.
  
  These figures from the Barrier Canyon style seem wraith-like… red ghosts arising from the rock.
  
  The Fremont Culture existed between 600 and 1200 AD and represented a more settled lifestyle. The rock-art of the Fremont Indians featured rectangular bodies with small heads. Both deer and mountain sheep are also found in the rock art below. Note the Indian shooting the mountain sheep with a large bow and arrow.
  
  This rock-art found in Sego Canyon is done in the so-called Fremont style where rectangular figures with elaborate jewelry were common.
  
  Mountain sheep are the most common animals found in Native America rock-art.
  
  The final culture represented in Sego Canyon is that of the Ute Indians who lived in the area from 1300 AD up to 1880 when they were forced off the land to live on reservations. One indicator of more ‘modern’ rock-art is the presence of horses that didn’t exist in North America until the Spanish introduced them in the 1500s. Note the red leggings on the central figure. I also like the little red guy riding the horse. Yahoo! The round figure on the right is thought to represent a shield.
  
  Identifying the age of petroglyphs is a difficult process. The appearance of horses shows that the petroglyphs were created after the 16th Century when the Spanish introduced horses to North America.
  
  In my next post I will travel to Dinosaur National Monument, which also has some very unique Indian rock-art such as this one featuring what I assume is a woman with big hands and some very fat dogs.
  
  Posted in National Parks, On the Road US | Tagged Barrier Canyon petroglyphs, Diamond Springs California, Dinosaur National Monument, Fremont Culture petroglyphs, Maidu Indians, petroglyphs, pictoglyphs, rock varnish, Sego Canyon, Three Rivers Petroglyph National Recreation Area, Ute Indian petroglyphs
- Bush Devil Ate Sam
  The Bush Devil Ate Sam is an important record and a serious story, yet told easily, and with delightful humor. This is one of the most satisfying books I have ever read, because it entertained me thoroughly AND made me feel better informed. —Hilary Custance Green: British Author... Click on the image to learn more about my book, the Bush Devil Ate Sam, and find out where it can be ordered.
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