Petroglyfs Around the Canyon

We had some time at the Canyon and decided to go on a tour of some local Havasupi Indian Petroglyphs. Peyton though that would be pretty interesting, and I did too, so we contacted a local tour company and were able to get booked for an evening tour. 

The tour vehicle reminded me of one of the Jurassic Park trucks from the first movie. It wasn't a Jeep, but it had seats in the back of a truck bed. It was quite the ride. 

 This is us on the back row. Eli looks so ethereal.

Here's Peyton and Eli listening to the tour guide. Peyton looks like he is asleep, but I swear I caught him in a blink.

The paintings are under an overhang; it's almost a cave but not quite. This is the view from under the overhang. The Havasupi would come down into the valleys around the Canyon to hunt and they would need a place to stay. They would bring about half of their entire village on the hunting trip and use the same "cave" every time they hunted.

This is one of the coolest petroglyphs we saw. The broom looking object in the middle is actually a--wait for it.....volcano! There is a definite dormant volcano fairly near the site. The squares next to it make up a calendar that they used to record when each time the volcano erupted. It last erupted about 900 years ago which would have coincided with the Havasupi camp. The volcano would have definitely impacted their weather. 

This is a picture of a mule deer. It's definitely not an elk because the elk were not introduced into the area until about 100 years ago.

 

Here we are under the same petroglyph. I asked the guide about vandalism and if us being there was a danger the to the artwork. He said that there were so many of these around they were difficult to keep track of, but the best locations were kept a secret and not open to the public. 

This one is a little hard to tell, but it is a wall full of handprints. The elders would dip the hands of the children in the blood of whatever animal they killed and put their handprint on the wall the first trip hunting. Each family would have a location on the wall and everyone would know their own handprint. It would be like a big family album.

 

This is a picture of two of the most common plants. The Ponderosa Pine and the sage plant. The other very common plant is the Pinion Pine. It is much shorter than the Ponderosa and the needles are only about an inch long. It has a really strong smell.

 

These next pictures are of mule deer. We didn't see them on this excursion, but while we were driving around the park. They are SOOOOOO big compared to the white tailed deer we have back home, and they are not afraid of humans, because it's not like there are any hunters on National Park property.  We saw a lot more when we stayed in the Grand Canyon because we would be there at both dawn and dusk when they are most active. On our ride around the park at dusk on one night, we must have seen at least 20.