It seems I left home at the right time, since a system came down from Canada that day and dropped our temps drastically. According to a neighbor who phoned me, the low temp the next day was 18F. In St George, it was about 45F that morning and around 70F that afternoon. I'll take it.
The drive across Utah on I-70 is always a thrill for me, with spectacular formations and canyons. Unfortunately, my plan to drive 450 miles did not allow for many photo stops along the way. Besides, I've taken lots of those photos in the past. I did stop for lunch and took a few shots then.
There were several items on my agenda for St George, mostly things I neglected to do last April on my way back to CO. So, on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon, I drove out into the desert to find the Little Black Mountain Petroglyph site. A few miles of rough road led to the site, but I don't know how it came to be named Little Black Mountain. It's a butte, not a mountain, and it's red, like almost all the terrain around St George. At least the "petroglyph" part of the name is valid. The BLM says there are 500 petroglyphs here, but I'm guessing there are many more than that since many are overlapped, some faded and lots more could be much higher on the cliffs.
The trails of gravel put there by BLM made it easy to see the major art panels by walking a mile round trip. In addition, lots of informal trails made me think there may be other petroglyphs that previous visitors had discovered. I tried some of those unofficial trails, but found only one petroglyph that required going off trail. Still, I would have enjoyed this place without seeing petroglyphs, simply because of the boulders strewn around the butte. The fanciful shapes and precarious positions made them quite interesting to me.
A pair of rock wrens seemed intrigued by my visit, as they kept following me around the site, but rarely staying put long enough for a photo. Finally, one of them slipped up and gave me a chance to get its portrait.
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