Smithsonian Butte, UT (4/14/2018) & Canaan Gap, UT (4/16/2018)

After finding the Paiute Cave, I still had time that day for more exploration.  Since I had taken the road to Colorado City, I thought I would try to find the "Yellow Man" pictograph on nearby Smithsonian Butte.  I had detailed instructions from the internet, but the distance to the first turn was wrong.  Not turning at the right place, however, gave me a great long distance view of the mountains in Zion National Park.

Zion National Park

Smithsonian Butte

Backtracking a bit, I found the road closest to the directions I had and it turned out to be the correct one.  After that, the directions were perfect, leading me through a series of turns and ending at the base of a very steep slope.  The trail was quite slippery, being covered with sand and small gravel.  In fact, I never would have made it up except for the old barbed wire fence running alongside the trail.  Having the wire to grab kept me from falling more than once, and the fence posts were helpful, too.  I arrived at a ledge quite winded.  A large rock at the top invited me to sit, so I did.

After catching my breath, I followed the directions by moving along the ledge to my left.  There were no pictographs that I could see, so I kept moving, climbing over a couple boulders and pushing through some bushes.  The ledge ended and I had seen no rock art, so I started back to the trail to start over.  There were some interesting formations along the ledge.

Back at my favorite rock, I looked up above it and there was "Yellow Man", directly over my resting place.  Once again, I have to say I've never seen anything quite like it.  Absolutely worth the effort.

In addition, around to the right I found more pictographs and a few petroglyphs.  Some were faded but all were visible and interesting.

More windy weather kept me in camp the next day, but the day after I just had to look for more unusual petroglyphs near Colorado City.  I invited the ladies from the next campsite to join me.  I had a pretty good idea of the mesa where the art is located in an area called Canaan Gap, but wasn't sure of the exact roads to get there.

Driving toward the area, I noticed a Jeep following us.  Thinking he may be going to the same place, I flagged him down. He had a different destination, but said he knew how to get to our petroglyphs.  Following him proved to be a real adventure.  Suddenly he drove over the rim of a wash with an almost vertical wall, and I went right behind him.  Twenty feet down, at the bottom, we took a hard left and then faced a boulder in the edge of the wash.  Going up on the wall, I missed the boulder.  Almost immediately, we faced a vertical wall to get out of the wash.  He made it up, so I gunned it and went after him.  Thank goodness for 4WD.  Throughout the couple minutes into and out of the wash, you never heard such language from my ladies.

We asked the guy if he had done anything like that before.   He told us he had done that wash in his ATV, but never in a Jeep.  "But I knew we could do it", he said.  The petroglyphs were a short hike up the end of the mesa.

From there, we had a good view of Canaan's Gap and could also see the wash we had just traversed.

These petroglyphs were unusual because many of them were much deeper than normal.  We don't know if they were originally dug deeper, or if erosion has taken more away for some reason.  In any case, they are called the "Cookie Cutter" petroglyphs due to their dept (around 3/8 inch). 

There were also a few that looked "normal", possibly because they were done at a later date.

 We finished our viewing, then tackled the wash again, but I'm afraid there was more shocking language as we drove over the edge.  Fortunately, the guy had told us about an exit that was much more gentle, and we appreciated that,