Horseshoe Canyon

Last weekend my dad and I took off to the San Rafael Swell. We started in Horseshoe Canyon, a deep canyon filled with incredible pictographs, known as the Great Gallery. The trail meandered through a sandy and rocky wash in the shadows of the towering walls and the cottonwood trees. There were small pools in the wash where thousands of little tadpoles and water skippers swam. The red pictographs rose high on the cliffs, obviously painted in a time when the canyon floor was higher. Some figures were close together with triangular bodies, and some had limbs wielding weapons.

Part of the Great Gallery panel

Little friend on the trail

On the way back we stopped at Chaffin Ranch Geyser. Who knew there was a geyser in the middle of the desert?! It was an old drill hole that spouts carbon dioxide and water filled with minerals twenty feet in the air. We were there when it blew, and it went on for about fifteen minutes. The ground all around the cold-water geyser is covered with hardened layers of minerals that turn everything a brownish-orange color. An old wagon wheel and wood beams laid close by, slowly petrifying. It was incredible.

Thanks, dad!