My time in Utah is coming to a close. I leave on Monday after work, and head towards Bakersfield, CA. The gypsy life wont let me be. Utah has been good. I have learned some valuable lessons about myself while out here ---which surprises me. The most important thing I learned though, is that I am NOT a desert creature. I miss the mountains and I miss the ocean (yet I am heading to the central valley in CA...). Anyway. Here are some photos from the past month....We have been having some crazy rains...They havent caused as much trouble as they did in Colorado, however they changed the landscape significantly. The first few pictures show that.

One of my favorite things in the world is the way mud cracks when it dries. The entire dessert looked like this.

As I was eating my lunch, these clouds were  rolling in. They turned into another storm, but looked damn good before hand.

This is an old corral I had to record. There were many different types of construction techniques...ax cut juniper logs, chainsaw cut juniper logs, and these rough (probably hand) hewn boards. You can see the tall bushes behind the corral, which is where there is a spring. I couldnt believe it when I came upon it...There were more bugs and flowers and sedgey grasses than I have seen all summer

Oh, just some more clouds. Stretching for ever.

One day, I was trudging away at the computer, cursing it. Threatening it lest it cooperate with me and do as I ask, and I heard all this commotion from the front of the office "theres a !! OHMGOD THERE IS A DFJKLDF WAIT. SERIOUSLY GUYS. THIS IS GOING TO GET HIT BY A CAR. OHMYGOD CAN ANYONE OPEN THE GATE?!!?" (we have a back area that is gated in, and all the BLM vehicles are kept here...for "security" or whatever...) Immediately, this peaked my interest ( as it would anyone) I at first thought "oh. its one of the town dogs that is allowed to run around". But LOVING dogs, and being deprived of fluffy puppy love, I ran outside, where Bob was patting his leg (as if calling a dog). But no. No dog came running through the gate...a BABY BLACK BEAR CAME RUNNING THROUGH. which IMMEDIATELY made me even more excited. I mean, its a baby. and its fluffy. and cute. So I ran outside. We eventually cornered the little scared munchin, and a fish and game guy came ( with his OLD LITTLE PUP named Riley...whom I obviously pet for a while as the men tried to figure out how to remedy the situation). Eventually, the baby (bear) was tranquilized and transported away. This is a picture after he was tranq-ed 

There are tons and tons of these oil wells all over the field office, and tons more going in shortly. This is the first one I have actually seen that was working...most of the others are abandoned. 

This is a picture of an AMAZING petroglyph. First, there are the concentric circles, which I am sure everyone can see. If you notice, there are lines coming in and out. There are a two ideas of what these mean...the first is that spirals are a common theme in Hopi and Navajo rock art, and there is often a "trail" leading out...this symbolizes the migration of the people. The second, is that this slab is slightly slanted, so the creators of this glyph may have put water into the grooves, to see which of the three or four exits it took. It may also be a combination of the two theories. Or neither. IN ADDITION... if you can see...there are two pecked divots to the top right of the circles. On the cross-quarter (the day between the solstice and the equinox) the sun shines into the larger one (which is closer to the circles) and creates an arrow head shape. This is pretty cool. 

Zoom in on this...its the first sight I had of this AMAZING rock art site...there are seven different colors and over 30 flute players displayed.

This is a close up the aforementioned rock art site. It depicts a ceremony which the members of the flute clan still practice today. Of the two green figures, one is a male (narrower waist) and one is a female ( fuller waster), and the flute players (commonly called "kokpelli") can be seen to the right of them. An interesting glyph, is the large red figure to the left of the green guys...a Hopi elder told us this was a cicada. 

More of the same site

This is at the same site, and shows Don (my boss, kind of bending over) showing LeRoy ( a Hopi elder...next to Don) some pecked flute players and other glyphs on the surrounding rocks

Same site...its amazing.

This is a site known as "The Coal Bed Site". It is one of the only known sites of orthostats (standing stones) in the Southwest, and the US. This is a line of stone slabs oriented north - south. I believe there are about 12 or 13 in total. At each equinox and solstice, the sun rises over one of them...this can only be observed from a single and large (although it was purposefully broken probably around the time of abandonment) standing stone across from them. In addition to these amazing stones, there are about a dozen kivas and pueblos on the surrounding hillside. People are trying to make this site a national park or monument because of how rare and amazing it is. I hope they succeed. 

This little puppy is the best home I have ever seen. It is located in Montezuma Canyon. I guess it is currently being used as storage, as there are many boxes piled in the windows. Id like to rent it out.

The Harvest moon above a fire

Ok. this is an awful shot. But it shows the great paintings on the inner wall of the Moon house ruin

Two pictographs above Moon House

Moon House Ruin. In all its glory. This site is impossible to access if the road is wet...which it has been most of the summer. The 8 mile road took us over 30 minutes to drive. 

Moon House from down canyon, you can see storm clouds rolling in...which worried me greatly...I was worried we would never get out.

This is a part of the interior panel in one of the square kivas at Moon house....this is how it got its name. The unpainted circle is the full moon, and directly across the kiva from it is a crescent moon. On the solstice the sun shines in a hole in the front wall and fills the small square niche you can see on the back wall.

Oh. just the BEAUTIFUL roof of the rock shelter. You can see the top of a granary in the lower right of the picture. 

It was raining sporadically as we were driving to Bluff that night, which created this amazing rainbow, that at points was a double ! and stretched from one end of the sky to the other.