Triassic and Dry Washes

February 21, 2026

On the last day that Chris was visiting on his latest U.S. trip, he had to go back to northern Utah around noon so we found something very close to do for a few hours. He hadn’t seen the rock art in either Triassic Wash or Dry Wash, and I had only been to Dry Wash but that was 20 years ago. And in about 2012 I had read of more rock art in that area, probably before it was ever called Triassic Wash, which I looked for but failed to find in 2016–it turned out that the wash I skipped 10 years ago is the one with the petroglyphs in it. We checked out Triassic Wash first, where there are only a few smaller petroglyph panels, and the last one we saw was particularly interesting.

Walking up Triassic Wash

Triassic Wash petroglyphs

From there we continued down the road to the Dry Wash rock art. A short section of wash is full of many petroglyphs and a few pictographs, as well as some old inscriptions from settlers of nearby and now-abandoned Desert Lake. I had completely forgotten how much rock art was there, and how good some of it was! We spent most of our time here, hiking up and down both sides of the wash and taking it all in. After reaching the end we returned to the truck and back home where Chris once again departed for his eventual return to Germany. And I hope it won’t be too long before I see him again–we have tentative plans for him to return again for a milestone trip in August.

1899 inscriptions in Dry Wash