I rode along with Alan to the Book Cliffs between the town of Green River and the Utah-Colorado border to look for some rock art on Saturday. He’d done all the research and knew roughly where to look for the rock art we were searching for. Our first objective was a very interesting owl pictograph. We covered a lot of ground looking for it before finally spotting it. There were actually some other pictographs nearby that I saw first, and so we looked more closely in that area and found the owl. It really is an unusual and very cool pictograph.

Haha, yeah, right!

The owl on its perch

The owl

Faint and indiscernible pictograph near the owl

Unusual pictograph near the owl

Fremont’s Mahonia

On our way out of the area in which we found the owl, we stopped to investigate some cliffs that looked, from a distance, like they held some rock art. There was a big blob of red pigment with a couple of petroglyphs nearby, and a grinding stone was sitting just below the rock art.

Faint bear print petroglyph

Smudges of pigment and a petroglyph

Petroglyph

Grinding stone below some rock art

We moved along to a different area and found a small spot with a lot of petroglyphs. There were many boulders containing rock art, much of which was carved in relatively small gaps between boulders. We searched the area until the sun set and probably didn’t find all the rock art nearby.

Viewing rock art is scary business

Boulder covered in weathered petroglyphs

Fat man

Bat(?) petroglyph

Faint pigment lines over some petroglyphs

Outstretched wavy arms and lichen

Crevasse between boulders with a lot of petroglyphs

Plain Emery gray pottery pieces

Weathered and lichen-covered petroglyphs

Spiral

Two bighorn sheep

Human figure with tiny fingers and toes

Hand petroglyph

Grinding stone

Petroglyphs with faint pigment

Petroglyphs enhanced with DStretch to show pigment that was added to them

Iron Man headhunter

Big hands

Pictograph over petroglyphs

Typical Fremont anthropomorph

Petroglyphs

Deer

After the sun disappeared behind the horizon we headed toward home with a stop in Green River to eat dinner at Ray’s Tavern. Once again we ate with Butch and Jeannie of Tavaputs Ranch, with whom we’d met there in January after a hike in the Sweetwater Reef area.

Sunset

A great way to end the day

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Photo Gallery: Book Cliffs Rock Art