Instead of a typical holiday celebration involving slaving over a stove for hours, then slaving over the dishes for more hours while guests fall asleep watching football, our holidays are typically spent in some sort of outdoors adventure. This year we decided to do a "Ruin and Rock Art Tour" in Southeastern Utah.

Our first stop was to investigate the "Sand Island Petroglyph Panel". We found accomodations at the Sand Island BLM campground, a not-well-advertised spot in an area managed by the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) located about 3 miles south of Bluff on route 191 in the SouthEastern Corner of the State. It is a free campground and boat ramp for access to the San Juan River, and the whitewater fun available there.

Thanksgiving Day dawned bright but windy and cold. A great day for exploring some ruins and rock art! Our intended Thanksgiving Feast dictated starting preparations before leaving camp. This was to be our first attempt at dutch-oven cooking, and we were prepared with advice from a dutch-oven guru friend of mine. We fired up some charcoal, got it good and hot, dug a hole in the ground, and put the coals in the pit. The dutch oven containing the turkey was placed on top of the coals, more coals added on top of the dutch-oven lid, and aluminum foil covered the lid to keep the dirt out of our bird. Then dirt was shoveled in around and over the pot and foil, and we left for the day while the turkey cooked! Great idea, huh?

The petroglyph panel is on about a 1/2 mile long stretch of rock, and has hundreds of individual petroglyphs in various scenes. It is fun to imagine just what they really mean. There are Kokopelli's (said to be a fertility god) galore, a parade of bighorn sheep, deer, snakes, and many symbols I haven't seen anywhere else. We were joking that maybe they didn't really mean anything amazing at all, maybe it is just ancient grafitti. Or maybe, the parents told the kids to "get out of their hair and go write on the walls".

Part of the panel is fenced in to keep the vandals out, (It is a shame that fences have to be erected. Why can't people understand how precious these things are, and refrain from desecrating them with grafitti? But I digress...) and part is open for closer investigation. However, the open part is not for the weak of heart as it requires a steep, unsturdy climb to get there. And watch for those cow patties!

Back to the turkey a few hours later... I guess we hadn't let the coals get hot enough, because when we got back to camp, the coals and the turkey were cold. Oh well, live and learn. So we fired up the coals again, and about 3 hours later it was delicious and juicy.

Sated with turkey and a little wine, and soothed by the song of the desert, (we were treated to the chorus of a coyote clan, and later on some hooting owls) we settled down for the night. Sometime in the wee hours, a dog from a neighboring camp came into our camp and proceeded to bark right into the tent. Todd hollered "Shush", the dog barked again. Todd hollered "Git", and there was yet another bark. Then Todd says "I wish I had my pit bull" and thus barked the dog nevermore. I guess you just have to know the right thing to say.

The next morning was cold but clear and calm, and I sat in the quiet of the morning, with a cup of hot coffee and observed the activity of the animals in the vicinity. Some of the critters I had the great fortune to watch were cottontail, flycatchers, scrub jays, ravens, and numerous other birds I couldn't easily identify.

We broke camp and headed North for the "Edge of the Cedars State Park" in Blanding, about 20 miles away. The first thing that amused me was the "road signs". Instead of traditional road signs showing the way, there are modern "pictographs" in the road pointing the way. Very clever!

Outside of the building are sculptures reminiscent of actual ancient art, and the inside walls of the building are decorated with modern "pictographs" and "petroglyphs" modeled after authentic ones which give one the feeling of actually being among the ancient ones.

The museum exhibits more artifacts than I've seen anywhere else, hundreds of pots, ladels, and other vessels in remarkably good shape. There are 2 art galleries. In one there were paintings of southwestern scenes, and the other displayed an exhibit of children's art some of which was pretty incredible.

Outside, there is one excavated ruin site and 3 more that have been discovered, but not yet excavated. The Kiva is open to visitors to go inside.

Of course they have a nice gift shop where there were a few books I couldn't resist. Hi, my name is Theresa, and I'm a book-aholic.

The last stop of the trip was at the "Lazy Lizard Hostel" in Moab where we took a nice, hot, long, $2.00 shower.