One would think I’m copying Moose Peterson’s blog posts because almost every post I’ve made about my trip to Moab follows a similar post by Moose. Today’s is no exception. His post today is “Rock Art” but the difference here is that his are from the day we photographed the rock climbers and the petroglyphs he featured today were just down the road from the rock climbers. My shots are from a couple of days before when we visited Newspaper Rock, a National Historical Site featuring similar petroglyph panels that are fenced off from mischievous hands. As I leaned over the metal fence to capture the first shot in this grouping, Moose admonished me that I’d better not drop my camera (my strap was not attached at the time) because if I dropped it inside the fenced area, I couldn’t retrieve it.
These petroglyphs were the newspapers of their day. The meaning of the symbols is lost to the eons but it is obvious they’re telling a story. It is incredible that these petroglyphs remain in such good condition. You can see in the last shot, about dead center, that in 1954 some worthy decided to add his own “Kilroy was here” comment to the ancient carvings. Barely visible above that is another “graffiti” from 1902.
Fantastic petroglyphs! We have some here, but I’ve never seen so many. Nice shots- especially the middle one!