April 23, 2014 (lots of pictures today)


We had another beautiful day today.  First we started off the day with a visit from a little rabbit (he is so cute).


Today we visited the Petroglyph National Monument.  Petroglyphs are fragile, non renewable cultural resources that once damaged can not be replaced.  The location we visited was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1986.  To the America Indians the entire monument is a sacred landscape.  There are over 20,000 images pecked in stone, some recognizable as animals, people, crosses and others more mysterious.   Archeologists estimate that most of the images were made 400 to 700 years ago by the ancestors of todays Native people.   Some images may be 2,000 to 3,000 years old.  The West Mesa is a 17 mile long table of land west of the Rio Grande, emerged about 200,000 years ago when lava flowed from a large crack in the Earth's crust.  This is the natural setting for the petroglyphs you see today.   Jim and I really enjoyed the images that were created centuries ago along and with a lesson in ancient culture.     


We move on tomorrow to Winslow, AZ. 


Happy Trails,
Jim and Debbie