Southeastern Utah, May 6, 2007

Since our last posting, we have been on the move!

We went from Phoenix up to Prescott, AZ, where we camped (boondocked) in a beautiful National Forest campground out in the woods. Madeline’s brother lives in Prescott, so we had a chance to do some more family visiting. Madeline’s nephew, Clayton, has recently bought a house and spends half his time living with his mother and dad, and the rest of the time living in his house. The house is a fixer-upper, so he had lots to do. Clayton is in his finishing year in junior College. He is also works as a fire fighter, working on forest fires. The summer season for his work is fast approaching.

After a few days in Prescott, catching up on errands, reading mail, and family visiting, we drove north, ending up in Bluff, Utah. Bluff is a small village in Southeastern Utah. It is on the edge if the Navajo Indian reservation and was settled in the late 1800’s by Mormon pioneers. The pioneer’s trip to Bluff was an interesting one. They made a trail south and more or less blasted a passage across the Colorado River at a place nor called “Hole in the Rock” They then worked their way east more or less following the San Juan River. What they did not realize was that they were blocked by an escarpment called Comb Ridge. They tried to bypass the escarpment by going to the San Juan River and following it up. This they did, but after tremendous work, since Comb Ridge goes down to the San Juan River. Finally, six months after starting their journey, the pioneers reached the area which is now known as Bluff, which was short of their original destination. They decided enough was enough, and they settled at Bluff.

We have had several adventurous trips from Bluff. One day we went to Goosenecks Canyon. This is a place where the San Juan River once meandered. Then the Colorado Plateau gradually rose, making the meandering river into a deep meandering canyon. We also took a road north from the canyon. The paved road suddenly turned into dirt road and proceeded to climb, with a series of hair-pin curves, up the side of a cliff to the top of a plateau. From this plateau we drove out to a spot overlooking the canyon some 1000 to 1500 feet below! Off to the distance we could see the spires of Monument Valley.

Another part of a same trip was through “Valley of the Gods”. This is is sort of a poor man’s Monument Valley, with lots of striking rock formations out in the desert.

We have spent quite a bit of time looking at archaic Indian ruins as well as petroglyphs. One day we visited Hovenweep National Monument. This is set of striking ruins in a canyon, and also on top of the canyon. The ruins were in fairly good shape, after some stabilization by the government people. The most striking thing about then were several high towers in building both in he canyon and on the rim of the canyon.

Last Thursday, we visited some interesting archaic Indian sites down on he San Juan River. These can only be reached by hiking, rafting or a 10 mile ride with 4-wheel drive. (We drove.) It was a pretty trip over fairly rough road down a long wash. We got a little lost a couple of times, but that added to the fun. Finally we came to two pueblo ruins set under cliffs. These were in remarkable shape. One could walk into the ruins and look at everything carefully. There were traces of corn and other seeds, shards of pottery. What an experience to see these thing, almost as if you were the first one ever to be there since they were abandoned 1000 years ago.

From there we drove on and at the end of the “road”, we found a cliff just full of petroglyphs. These were beautiful – really striking – and among the nicest we have ever seen. While there we ran across a midden ((refuse pile) full of pottery shards, flint striking and some curious stones that looked like broken grinding stones.

We have now left Bluff, moving north a few miles to Blanding. We are a little higher elevation, and yesterday it snowed. So much about our concern about wanting to be here before it gets too hot!