Mother [of all] Goosenecks

You really have to see the entrenched meander that is the San Juan Goosenecks to believe it. (Look up "entrenched river" in Wikipedia, and it's essentially the definition given.)

Single photos just can't capture its scale, beauty, and alienness at all. And even the panoramic shot, above, that Henry took still falls short. (Click on it to see the full image.) This video might do a little better, but you still really should visit Goosenecks State Park for yourself and see it.

The park is just 10-15 minutes from Mexican Hat, and we headed there shortly after checking in to our post-paddle motel (but after a shower and a quick nap!).

Unfortunately, the late afternoon sun isn't the best for photographing this amazing scenery, but we couldn't help taking lots of pictures anyway.

It's hard to believe that's just one river's work down there! Two years ago, when Henry and his buddies extended their San Juan paddle to include this section (almost 60 more miles and 5 more nights!) they looked up here and saw tiny figures at the State Park taking in this view. But we didn't see any tiny boats down there this time, much to our disappointment.

We did get to see the Goosenecks again, from another vantage point, the next day.

After a rather too-exciting drive through the Valley of the Gods (pix from here later) we climbed the Moki Dugway, which is a pretty exciting road, too...

From the top of Cedar Mesa, you can take a little spur off the main road and get to Muley Point, which is a really, really fun place to explore. I'll have more pictures from here in my next post, but today I wanted to focus on the Goosenecks view that you get from this vantage point. 

You can't see down into the meander as well here as from the state park, but as a panoramic vista, the view is pretty spectacular. (The little tan ribbon in the photo above is a tributary streambed; when it's running there must be quite a waterfall down to the river!)

What amazing, amazing scenery! I'm not too surprised, upon reflection, that we ran into so many European tourists, not to mention folks from all over the U.S., at these various stops. (My license plate count came close to the numbers for Montana, even though we didn't hit any national parks on this trip.) You just can't find scenery like this anywhere else on planet Earth, imho.

Although we suspect that one of the main draws for these visitors, especially the rich Europeans, was what you can see in the background of this shot, looking over the top of the Goosenecks at Muley Point:

It's the most famous stretch of rock formations in this area, and, yes, we did visit it. I plan to finish up my series of posts with that excursion, though, so you'll have to wait a while to get a closer look.

San Juan River: ancient art & architecture

One of the big draws of the section of the San Juan that we paddled is its abundance of archaeology. Although the high water prevented us from stopping to view some of the more famous rock art collections (namely the panels at Butler Wash), we still saw plenty.

It was such fun visiting these sites and walking along a cliff when, bang! all of sudden there was a work of art several hundred, perhaps even a thousand, years old! It does take a little eye-training to be able to spot some of these figures, but it's well worth it.

I couldn't help but be reminded, when looking at these artistic creations, of Kim Stanley Robinson's wonderful, wonderful novel Shaman, that I read last year. The rock art we saw wasn't as ancient as that which inspired KSR, but it's old enough that whoever created it seems, initially, to have to be completely alien to us. 

But, then, you see the art, and respond to it. Which means that these ancient peoples must not have been so different from 21st-century humans after all. We had so much fun discovering, and trying to interpret, these wonderful images and structures.

(Henry's camera got much better photos of these fascinating artifacts, and he's generously let me use some in this post.)

The items we're excited about in the photos above are petroglyphs, which were made by carving into the outer layer of a rock face, often made up of "desert varnish." Since this stuff is very common on exposed rock faces all over the southwest, and since, even given the area's dryness and overall inhospitable-ness, all kinds of indigenous peoples have lived here...well, there are a lot of petroglyphs to see. 

note the Kokopelli figure, left of the big man

All of the photos so far were taken on our hike to see the Moki steps on our first day of paddling. These steps are features that are also common in the desert, usually near cliff dwellings. The residents would use them, we surmise, to get up and down from their well-protected buildings...well-protected since it would take pretty strong and agile climbers to surprise you by climbing up these steps!

we were not able to see the ruins that are probably in the alcove at the top of the steps

Here is a closer look at this ingenious "ladder":

I was also intrigued by another set of holes, much smaller, near the steps. What could these have been for? Sorry I didn't include something for scale in the photo, but as I recall, each hole was about nickel-quarter-sized.

Our first night's campsite was chosen because of its proximity to the River House ruin, where we spent a delightful morning exploring. Here's the main ruin, snuggled up nicely on a wide ledge, under a convenient overhang of rock...

Not only was the ruin itself fun to wander around in (we were careful not to climb on the walls or otherwise disturb things, but the regulations still allow plenty of ways to explore the site)...

Cynthia and Henry enjoying the walk-through-museum

...but there was rock art here, too, in addition to the building. You might be able to see this pictograph high on the wall in the photo above...

By the way, one of the many things I learned on this trip was the difference between petroglyphs and pictographs, terms which had always confused me. The snake (or is it the river?) above is a pictograph because it's painted on the rock surface, rather than incised upon it, like the petroglyphs I showed you before.

Here's some more:

Down the ledge a ways is an "outbuilding," what's called the "granary." What a gorgeous piece of workmanship! Not quite on the same scale as the Inkas, but it did remind me of the stonework we saw in the Andes.

One of the most archaeology-rich areas we planned to visit was up Chinle Creek. However, the creek was responding to a lot of rain upstream and we couldn't cross it to get to the sites on the other side. (We found out later that it was peaking just about the time we were there...at about 200 times its normal flow!)

However, we had a very pleasant hike on the near side of the creek (you can see a lot of the naturally gorgeous and interesting rocks we saw in this post) and Henry, intrepid explorer, did find a way to get close enough to the sites to get some good pictures:

cliff dwelling across the creek

"baseball man" pictograph

And, we saw yet another manifestation of indigenous art...pottery shards. These lovely items were littering the ground at the end of a small arroyo, no doubt washed down from middens higher up...

Our final petroglyph stop was actually right where we started. There's a very impressive panel at Sand Island, near Bluff, where we had launched several days before. Since we were much too busy then to take the time to do an art walk, Henry and I made sure we stopped by on our way home...

the guy on the wall is one of the largest figures we saw anywhere

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We were able to get much more up close and personal to the rock art and ruins along the San Juan than we were at other points on our journey, but we did see some amazing archaeology at Canyon de Chelly and Natural Bridges National Monuments, and I'll show you those sites in my next post.

BTW, I've put almost all of my San Juan pictures up in a Flickr set, if you haven't seen enough of this amazing scenery.

San Juan River: living the high life

ingeniously-set-up camera provides shot with everyone in it!

This is the motley crew that braved the flashing-flooding San Juan with us. A very congenial group, that just happened to include a couple of the world's best camp cooks—along with assorted willing and variously talented sous-chefs. So we lived pretty high on the hog (and the chicken and the cow, not to mention the peaches) during our 4 nights on the river.

peach cobbler for not one, but TWO, desserts, plus leftovers at breakfast!

sous-chef extraordinaire Katie, serving tortilla casserole

The campsites we found were nice, too...

our tent at sunset, Camp Fossil Stop, our final night on the river

beached boats at Fossil Stop campsite

camp dining area, River House campsite, our first night out

boats at sunset, River House campsite (before the water rose!)

living room/dining room/boat garage at Chinle campsite, where we stayed two nights

our tent on its soft bed of sand at Chinle campsite

Unfortunately, I didn't get photos of all our fabulous food, but here was Fossil Stop's yummy beef stew...

Also on the menu: heavenly Jambalaya, stupendous tortilla casserole, and sublime meatballs and spaghetti. No, we didn't starve in the wilderness!

Neither did these guys, either, I suspect. They visited our Fossil Stop campsite, and one of them even made off with a package of Cynthia's spam!

Definitely, a great time was had by all!

Katie and Cynthia relaxing at sunset, Fossil Stop...before the spam theft

All too soon (although perhaps not too soon, given the dirty states of hair, bodies, boats, and gear) we were taking out at Mexican Hat, Utah, at the nice boat ramp...

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Next up, glimpses of the high life, circa 1200-1400 (or so)...ancient art and architecture on display along the river.

San Juan River: rock-lover's delight

The rocks all over this part of the world are simply amazing. I'll be showing and telling you later about some of the great geological wonders we saw off the river, but today's fabulous rocks we saw either from our boats or on hikes taken during our river excursion.

The beauty above (probably 20 feet high, at least) was an erratic just sitting there posing for us on the trail between the River House Ruin and Comb Ridge, not 15 minutes from our first campsite. I wouldn't like to have been anywhere in the area when it broke off from the cliff in the picture below...it would have made quite an impression!

This parent outcropping is probably 100+ feet high. The Ruin itself (stayed tuned for a future post about all the archaeological treasures along this river) is just around the corner to the right:

Some of our best rock-spotting happened on our hike up Chinle Creek, where our 2nd and 3rd night campsite was. The plan was to cross the creek and see some of the Mesa-Verde-like ruins on the other side, but just as the River was really rushing, so too was this main tributary creek, and there was no place to cross.

The hike was still fun, though, and the natural architecture was as wonderful as the archaeology (which we could see across the way very nicely through our binoculars).

a long-dislodged boulder left a striking slot in this cliff

Sedimentology 101...closeup of rocks along the trail

The shot below looks like I loaded it upside down, but I'm not that absent-minded yet. I took it just looking straight up from our nicely shaded lunch spot at the base of a gorgeous cliff. The color contrast between the rocks and the sky was even more marvelous than it looks in the pictures. I just couldn't keep from being entranced by it.

Another amazing hunk of rock was right in front of us at our lunch spot:

Michael called my attention to its artistic-looking quality. Doesn't it look like the work of a master abstract sculptor? Here's a shot that shows you how it was "mounted" in this "gallery":

That striking formation in the distance is Mule Ear, and one of the blobs of rock around it is the Mule Ear Diatreme, which Henry tried, several times and not too successfully, I'm afraid, to point out to us. Here's a closer shot; there was much discussion as to whether the diatreme is the rock in front or off to the right from the distinctive "ear." A rose by any other name, etc., etc. It was great scenery regardless.

The River winds its way through more and more amazing rock scenery as the trip progresses. (If you want to see it really winding, take a look at this video of the Goosenecks, a downstream section of the River we didn't paddle this time but were able to see from above. More about this stupendous scenery later.)

a great wall seen our first day

looking back upstream at 8-Foot-Rapid...note tiny boats beached on the right

more canyon scenery

This particular feature is a "perched meander." A tight winding in the ancient San Juan (like the Goosenecks, which are entrenched meanders) eventually got to be too much work for the water and it found a straighter, easier path, which left the old meander high and dry...

distinctive formations near the end of the trip

But the most striking, and most welcome, rock feature we saw was the little guy in the photo below. We knew he was telling us that our take-out was very near, since he's Mexican Hat Rock and we were taking out at Mexican Hat, Utah.

Yep, it's not too long between this...

... and this...

sundae at the Olde Bridge Grille

Yes, ice cream came even before a shower and much-needed hair-washing. As you can tell. Fortunately the grille at the bridge (handily adjacent to the San Juan Inn, where we had a reservation for the night) is only too happy to provide treats like this to hungry, thirsty paddlers.

Although we really had no reason to be hungry. In the next post, I'll show you some of the scrumptious meals we had on the river, as well as other shots of campsite life.