we took advantage of the good fall weather (and my abundance of vacation time) to spend a long weekend down in SE utah. we went back to our beloved bear ears and camped at one of favorite spots there. we drove down on wednesday and then went out exploring in a couple new canyons on thursday and friday.
some thick cryptobiotic crust.
a cottontail. we saw a handful of these. and can i just say they really are super cute. those little cotton ball tails are almost too much.
all 3 of us
a beautiful rock. of course, we didn't keep anything from the monument.
a site with a kiva.
note the broken metate. 
i like it when there are these big stones built into structures. 
the way the desert preserves wood is always amazing to me. 
it's so fun to find rock art.
we really liked these swirl hands. 
we saw so many claret cup cactuses on this trip. 
this whole site area was really cool, including the kiva. this one was in very good shape.
note the green paint.
hand marks from molding the plaster on the walls. 
we enjoyed the bright hits of yellow in the canyon.
some cool indian paintbrush.
the patterns in nature: endlessly interesting.
big banana yucca grove.
an anvil on the surface of earht.
still some pretty wildflowers blooming--even in late october!
the hugest potsherd. b saw and unearthed this one, and then carefully hid it away. 
i like the two-tone nature of this one.
a big ol' cactus garden.
a very cool rock that b found that clearly was not native to this area. it looked like a large river rock. 
worn down on one side. 
b caught a lizard!
oh this place was wild! we were walking up on high ledge and looked over the edge and saw that they had built a structure on a lower ledge that looked very, very precarious. this was enough to give you a bit of vertigo.
tobias, how did you come here?
i love the green rock art.
the work of someone else. 
another large rounded stone. 
what cool patterns. 
polka dots!
i mean come on. how cool are these patterns? imagine seeing these whole pots. 
a pretty autumn bush.
we ran into some problems getting out of the canyon on thursday. important lesson: pay attention to the cairns when you're in steep slickrock areas. 
the weather was incredible on our trip. we really lucked out.
here we are on friday morning.
this place was really neat. it was at ground level near a spot that would clearly have water rushing next to it (if there was a flash flood). it was a place that i never would have expected to have a structure. 
we thought this pictograph looked like a person holding out big gunds. sierra wondered if it might be a rendering of custer coming after the navajo who hid out in this area for several years. we thought that was a clever hypothesis. 
a navajo hogan! we found this unexpectedly, which was really exciting. the night before a man had told us that the navajo had hid out in this area for a while to stay away from the us government out to get them. this structure is old, but definitely not more than about 150-175 years. we were fascinated by how thick the crust was on it. a good indication of how quickly the cryptobiotic crust can grow.
i like the figure on the left. it looks like a person with a bird head.
a snake we found!
it was a surprisingly long snake--probably about 2.5 feet but very skinny. 
such a nice pattern.
what?! b found an arrowhead. 
a cool and kind-of scary looking bone.
friday evening we met b's parents in blanding and then found a place not so far out to camp.
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