Here There and Everywhere

Potash Road and Pictographs, Moab, Utah

Potash road is 279; you can see where it begins near the entrance to Arches National Park, but on the other side of the main road as you are going towards Moab. It is clearly marked Potash Road.

 

 

After our long hike, and our fabulous lunch, we took a short nap, then headed out to find ancient petroglyphs and pictographs. (Pictographs are painted on, petroglyphs are incised out.) Potash Road was near the entrance to Arches National park. It looked like an ordinary road, even a farm road. Once again, a road that started out looking and sounding inauspicious turned out to be a lot of fun.

First, the road follows the Colorado River flowing along swiftly, full of rafters and boaters. Then you come to the cliffs about 5 miles in which are used by the climbing and rappelling schools to teach rock climbing, and there must have been fifty separate people working their way up and down the cliffs. This is not for the weak in body; we saw one dazed and damaged young man being loaded into an emergency vehicle for transport back to the hospital. Just past the rock climbers is the first set of petroglyphs, which are really hard to spot, about 20 feet off the ground, but once you get the hang of it, you start spotting them everywhere.

The truth is, I can hardly ever spot them. AdventureMan has sharp eyes, he spots them and shows me where they are. This time, they are about 15 feet, 20 feet above the road. They were incised when the Colorado River, at our backs, was higher, before it eroded the valley more deeply.

 

Can you see any pictographs?

 

 

I can begin to see these; AdventureMan shows me where they are.

These are the cliffs where the rock climbing classes are held and the pictographs co-exist with the rock climbing.

Now, they are beginning to be more clear.

 

 

 

 

 

This is what the casual observer sees:

If you see closely, you can find some petroglyphs.

 

 

This is near the end of Potash Road, looking back into Canyonlands, toward the Dead Horse Point.

 

The Colorado River parallels Potash Road, which is in the foreground.

 

This is the climb up to the dinosaur track. I got this far, and the next part of the hike was straight up. It’s late in the day, my legs are shaky, I am not going to climb straight up and risk falling straight down.

 

This is the dinosaur print.  AdventureMan climbed all the way up!

 

 

 

 

 

Potash Road was a total thrill. It is easy to miss the sign for the Dinosaur Track if you are coming from Moab. We got all the way past the Potash Plant to the beginning of the unpaved, unimproved road before we turned around, and only on the way back did we spot the sign showing where the dinosaur track was. It was not a well marked trail, in fact, it was barely a trail at all, and I thought it was dangerous.

May 26, 2017 - Posted by intlxpatr | Adventure, Beauty, Exercise, Road Trips, Travel | Canyonlands, Moab, petroglyphs, Pictographs, Potash Road