12/20 Petroglyph Canyon/Mouse's Tank

This is a half-mile fairly easy walk on red sand and over a very few rocks.  It is called both Petroglyph Canyon for the many rock paintings and Mouse's Tank after a renegade Paiute who used the many canyons to hide from authorities.  At the end of this canyon is a "tank," or a stone or a hole in the rock that holds water after a rainfall.  This tank was obviously used for centuries as a source of desert water because of the many petroglyphs on the walls.

This is the entrance to the canyon:

Parts of the red canyon wall become dark because of reactions with the air.  These sections make great writing tablets.  All the Native Americans had to do was peck at the surface with a rock to produce an image.  Look at the amazing variety of drawings on this section.

And this section.  Actually, the fact that most of the writing in on the darker sections make it easier to search for the petroglyphs.

This group were about 30' high on the canyon wall.  Don't know how they got up there.

Here are more drawings on various rocks. Some of the drawings are faded and others were partially destroyed when chunks of the soft rocks would fall off. 

 

I took this picture because I wanted to show the layering patterns in the rocks and the naturally occurring holes.

This is the tank known as Mouse's Tank.  The water here may have come from rain that fell months ago.

Another photo showing how this red rock has eroded over time.

 

Very nice walk, and well worth the hour or so it took.  The sun was getting low in these last photos so I knew it was time to go back to the campground--after fixing myself a quick sandwich, of course.  It is so nice to have your vehicle with you all the time so you can use the bathroom, wash the dust off of you, and fix a meal or get a drink from the refrigerator!