Today we set out to find the home of the Ancient Ones…
We were up at about 7:15am hoping to be on the road no later than 9am. Our destination for the day was a hotel in Page, AZ. We needed to allow time for some short hikes to a couple of Ancient Anasazi Ruins and still catch a sunset at Horseshoe Bend outside of Page.
We decided that it was a good morning to make a big breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage and hash browns… Yum! It was delicious!
We had our wet camp packed up and were on the road before 9. It had rained most of the night and the tent rain fly was very wet. Packing up a wet tent is usually not a good idea as mold can deteriorate the fabric and cause it to disintegrate. But knowing that we would be in Death Valley in a couple of days, it was certainly going to get a chance to dry out.
On the way out of The Needles, we stopped at Newspaper Rock. Here one of the largest collections of petroglyphs can be found carved into the sandstone cliffs just off the road in Indian Creek Canyon. The site has over 650 designs etched into the rock and the oldest carvings are about 2000 years old. Several cultures of Ancients over the ages used the site to tell their stories.
We headed south to Blanding, UT, fueled up and then west on UT95 into the Cedar Mesa area in search of a couple of ancient Anasazi Ruins. We were going to Butler Wash Ruins and the House On Fire Ruin. The latter I had been to years ago (you can find a post on that trip here), but wanted to share this amazing place with Harmony.
Butler Wash was a different story. I had never been, but found out about it doing some research on ruins in the area. Most people visiting this location hike out to a viewpoint on the opposite side of the canyon for a distant view of the ruins. I of course had a different plan…
The Cedar Mesa area is rich in archaeological sites from the Ancient Anasazi / Ancestral Puebloans and endless adventures can be found with a bit of research. The ruins we were out to explore date back to 1200 AD.
Through research, I came across information describing how to access the Butler Wash Ruins directly by hiking up the wash they are located in and then scrambling up the cliffs to the high alcoves where they sit. This proved to be a bit more of an undertaking than I had anticipated and required some coaxing from Harmony on the exposed cliffs as my vertigo set in…
But in the end persistence, determination and a lot of adrenaline got us up the lofty cliff face to this amazing location! Hard to imagine living up in this hard to reach place… It seems to me that the people that lived here must have feared the threat of some intruders and needed a location that could easily be defended. With only one precarious way in, it would have been easy to keep others away.
After exploring the site for a half hour or so, we scrambled back down and made our way back through the boggy wash to the car.
Onto The House On Fire ruin… Only a few miles down the road and a mile hike and we were at this very cool location. The site gets its name from the patterns of the rock above the ruin that look like flames emanating from the rooftop. After a quick exploration and customary photos, we headed back to the car for the drive to Page, AZ and our destination for the day.
We followed the Trail Of The Ancients over the Moki Dugway, through Mexican Hat and past Monument Valley… Arriving in Page, AZ, we checked into our hotel for the night and immediately headed out to Horseshoe Bend for the sunset.
Horseshoe Bend, like everything in life, is changing. When I first came to this location years ago, there was only a small gravel parking lot and a trail out to the cliffs overlooking the bend. Now they have a concrete viewing area with a railing to keep people from falling to their deaths, are going to be implementing a shuttle bus, have paved a parking lot that will cost $10 and looks like they are going to pave a road right to the edge of the overlook for the shuttle bus to drop visitors off and probably some sort of visitor center…
We were lucky though… Even though the signs said “No Parking At Horseshoe Bend. Take Next Left For Shuttle”, we continued on and drove right into the paved parking area without paying a dime!
I am thankful to have experienced this place before these changes have come to be…
