Boise Daytrip - Celebration Park

Petroglyphs an hour from Boise?  Well, that was reason enough for a roadtrip!  Most of the ride was pretty uneventful scenery-wise; there were lots of ranches and plenty of ground squirrels to see and not a lot else until we got to Celebration Park along the Snake River.

The main attraction is the boulder field with rock art dated to about 10,000 years ago.

Believe it or not after I took the picture of the sign we walked right past the spur and ended up having to go back to find them.  Sometimes I forget to actually pay attention to what I see through the viewfinder!

Because it was such a bright day we had a lot of trouble seeing the petroglyphs.  All that sun shining off the dark rocks was like a magic eraser.  A little help from polarized lenses and photo editing software comes in handy at times like these.

Did you see the tiny lizard making its way down the side of the boulder on the left?  Here's a closer look at him (or her?) and the other one it met up with at the bottom.

Besides a magpie and a few kildeer the only other wildlife we saw was the bees enjoying the spring flowers.

Orange Globemallow

Luckily none of them mistook Cory's flashy new hair color for a flower!

We also walked down to Guffey Bridge to get a little additional exercise. Built in 1897, this former railroad bridge was used to get people and stuff like silver and gold out of the mines until about 1947.

taken with DSLR

The steel bridge is about 70 feet tall and spans 500 feet across the river.

taken with iPhone 6s+

Bullet holes are visible overhead from when fighter planes used it for target practice during World War II.  Rat-a-tat-tat!

As we were leaving a lot of families were showing up with picnics and people were setting up fishing poles along the river to enjoy the beautiful day.  We hopped in the car and enjoyed the air conditioning after walking in all that bright sun!

Necedah NWR and Roche-A-Cri State Park

There was a lot of wildlife to be seen at Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. Our list included snapping turtle, painted turtles, sandhill cranes, a rose breasted grosbeak, white tailed deer, ducks, geese, coots, trumpeter swan, squirrels...but no sign of caterpillars or chrysalis of the Karner blue butterfly.

We weren't even all the way to the Visitor Center when we ran across Wildlife Biologist Jon Olson and his just captured snapping turtle.  She was enormous, and very unhappy to be in the back of his truck.

Many thanks to Jon for sharing his time and his experience with us!  At one time snappers were being killed because they ate baby ducklings, but research indicated this was not their most common meal and not a threat to the survival of their species.  Lots of interesting information on snappers here. 

The Visitor Center was almost a let-down after that encounter, but I gotta admit that they had a really nice trail system that traversed a couple of different habitats.

While we were walking along the boardwalk we noticed there was a controlled burn going on, and we got to see it a little closer up when we drove around the refuge.



It looked like some carp might have gotten stranded when the water rose with all the spring rains.  Something was dragging them up onto the boardwalk and helping to clean up the mess they left behind.

Kind of gross, so I'll move on to some nicer wildlife shots.



We were very curious about what might be living in the burrows...anyone have any ideas?

After we left the refuge we had a quick lunch and headed over to Roche-A-Cri State Park to see their petroglyph/pictograph panel.  Unfortunately it was quite disappointing, but maybe anything is after seeing the ones in Utah.

The wall was thick with graffiti, and even with the help of the sign all we could locate was the above pictograph of a humanoid figure in red.  We stuck around as long as we could, but the first mosquitos of the season were swarming around the platform and we had to escape!  More stories from Wisconsin tomorrow!

Petroglyph Love, Moab 2009

Mark and Bobbie from Box Canyon Blog are in Moab right now, and that has me thinking of our short time there in 2009. Of all the places we've been it's the one that I can't wait for us to get back to.  We were only there for a few days, and it's a place that grew on me quickly.

Unfortunately I'm not as poetic as Mark, if you want to read about the throes of ecstasy seeing all that red rock can bring, head on over to his blog and see it through his eyes.  All I know is before we left I was in Love with a capital L, and I've spent every white midwest winter since then dreaming of snow drifting across that Entrada and Navajo Sandstone.

I wrote about our trip and my dreaming of returning in another post, but I thought I'd take the time to revisit the topic and go into a little depth about a new obsession that our trip awakened besides the red rock...petroglyphs.

When we stopped into the Moab visitor center a lovely lady told us we should check out some of the area petroglyphs and gave us a brochure detailing how to find them. Petroglyphs are pecked into or incised on stone walls, and pictographs were painted on stone. We haven't seen any pictographs yet, but certainly enjoyed the petroglyphs. If you want to know a little more about the rock art and the people who made it, go here.

 We started with the 125 foot panel on Potash Road.  The black patina on these sandstone cliffs is especially good for petroglyphs and the images represent a wide variety of topics from  hunting to ceremonial practices to domestic life.  Dating the rock art is difficult, but most of the rock art in the area is from multiple periods. The figures seemed so alien, but I've since done some homework and they make sense when you know the history.

What we thought looked like aliens is probably Fremont warriors with shields wearing ear bobs that hang down to their shoulders and possibly a headdress.

This one really confused me with all the lines, but after reading about the giant desert centipedes that live in the region it all clicked. The small figure in the middle toward the bottom looks like an archer chasing a big horn sheep.

This one was a little more obviously a hunting scene, including archers, big horn sheep and a rather large bear!

Looks like a scorpion on the bottom left, and some type of bird figure on the far right.  The figures holding hands are perhaps women dancing. 

We were so enthralled by these images from the past that we also searched out the boulder with the birthing scene. It took us awhile to find, but I was glad that we didn't give up!

There is some debate as to whether it really is a birthing scene or just an enlarged vulva meant to depict fertility, but either way it is still a unique representation. Ranger Kathryn's blog, which I found this morning, says a breech birth...hmmm, makes sense!  There are a variety of images on the boulder. As for the image below...I still don't have a clue!  Witch on a broomstick since it's almost Halloween?  Maybe someone can help me out!

There is only one petroglyph site open to the public in Wisconsin at Roche-a-Cri State Park. I meant to get there this year but I guess it will have to wait until next year because it's a 3 hour drive from here and there is a lot more to see in the area so I'll want to make it a camping trip.

I also read a couple of great books by Craig Childs that fueled my new obsession about ancient southwestern culture.  I may not be as obsessed as he is...but I did get some great ideas for future trips, including a desire to go visit Chaco Culture. When you're traveling you just never know where your adventures will really end up taking you.  I know I got a lot more out of our trip to Moab than I had planned on!