The next day we weren’t really sure what our plan was. I found a hike south of Grand Junction that had Native American petroglyphs on the trail. S we decided to give it a shot.
It took us a bit of time to find the right trail. We stopped off at a few different places before finding the right trailhead. The Dominguez-Escalante Nation Conservatory is a huge piece of land. There were several turn-offs along the highway to get into the park and honestly we were just guessing at random.
The first part of the walk was along the ridge of a cliff. The trail overlooked a cattle farm and the view was absolutely fantastic with the canyon in the background. Eventually, we made our way down the canyon wall and crossed the river.
We walked along the river for a while and it was really scenic. In the national conservatory, you can camp for free and there were several campsites along the river. You have to hike in and out but it might be a place to stop off at if I’m ever in the area again.
Eventually, we turned off the river and into another canyon. At this point, we had been walking for about two hours and we stopped and talked to a few people we crossed paths with. I asked them about the rock art and they gave us directions to get there.
We still managed to get a bit lost, however. The canyon had quite a few turns and sometimes something that looked like part of the trail just ended up leading to a dead end. We found our way eventually though.
As we walked along the trail I had a strange feeling and I veered off and started looking behind this gigantic rock. The people told us that we could find petraglyphs behind random rocks if we looked hard enough. Lo and behold we found some behind the very first rock that we looked behind. We hung out there for a bit and moved on further up the trail.
About five minutes along the trail there was another large rock with a large number of petroglyphs. It looked like a scene of some sort, perhaps something related to their spiritual beliefs. It reminded me of something I had seen in South Australia.
There was a small plaque there but it didn’t explain what the markings were about. We met another group of people who were camping out there for the night and chatted with them for a bit. Then we made our way back to the car.
It was good that we had difficulty finding the trail because we ended up finding a few campsites along one of the roads. Just random pull-offs along the dirt road. Perfect for van camping.
We had a great view of the mountains and just pulled up and made dinner while the sun set. We blasted the music and just had a two-person dance party right there on the road. It was a good ending to a good day.