Rock Art -- Natural and Man made

First thing today, we went to hike the Delicate Arch trail in Arches
National Park. On the way we saw the Wolfe Ranch, made by a man from
northern Utah. Next along the trail to Delicate Arch, we saw a Ute
Indian Petroglyph with pictures of animals and hunters. Of all the
rock art we would see (more to come), this was of the most recent
period, done a hundred or two hundred years ago. The trail soon
became slickrock and after another 30 minutes or so of ascending, we
reached the edge of a cliff. It was really windy, with gusts up to
sixty miles an hour, but the arch at the end of the trail was
awesome. We hiked back down, finding a less windy place to eat
lunch, returned to our cars, and drove farther into the park to the
trailhead for Landscape Arch. This is widely considered the longest
arch in the world, at over 290 feet. At its thinnest point it is only
6 feet thick. It was 11 feet thick, but a huge chunk cracked off and
fell in 1995. Since then, the path that led under the arch has been
closed. We hiked back into a strong, sand-blowing wind and drove out
of the park and along a couple of roads that wound along the Colorado
river in search of more petroglyphs. We found several that were
extensive and detailed. The first panel was from the "Formative"
period, from A.D. 1 -- A.D. 1250, and was from either the Anasazi or
Fremont people -- both of whom were Ancestral Puebloans. We continued
up the canyon until we came to a sight with another rock art panel and
also a set of dinosaur tracks. These were from an allosaurus in the
Jurassic period 150 million years ago. Next, we drove along a road on
the other side of the Colorado river until we came to a sight with a
large panel of petroglyphs from both the Archaic and Formative
periods. The archaic period goes back all the way to 12,000 B.C. All
the petroglyphs, along with our hikes, made the entire day a lot of
fun. We some day hope to return.
--Christian and Jack (with editing from teachers)