Sometimes you come across a site that is almost stupefying in its sheer abundance – petroglyphs on every rock, for a quarter mile or more. These sites are thrilling to find, but they are difficult to document. I have a few like that sitting on the back burner, where every time I open the photo folder I think “I can’t really not show any of these 200 photos I picked from the 500 I took, they’re all good photos showing interesting elements … but who would want to sit through a blog post the length of a football field?”

Other times, you find a site so small that you can capture all there is to see with a single photo. I’ve definitely visited those, too!

And there’s also a third kind of site: lonely, rudimentary, unimpressive … a few scratches on a rock and maybe some small signs of habitation, a forlorn permanent record of a fleeting stay.

In a way, these sites are the most evocative to visit. Who lived here, how long ago, and why does it appear as if they were alone, or only part of very small group that left hardly any footprint at all? How did they scratch a living from this desolate land?

A while back we visited such a site. It is in an odd part of the Park, nowhere near the other sites in the Park, and nowhere near recorded habitation areas.

On to the habitation site. In the foreground is a grinding slick. There were several lightly used slicks scattered around a large-ish boulder sitting all by itself.

This boulder sits in a small saddle, which gives it a very exposed feeling. I’m sure it would get windy here, but someone once settled here for a while. You can see grinding slicks on two of the smaller boulders.

One of the small boulders has a basic petroglyph scratched on it.

The depression in this rock seems somewhat smoothed. Maybe it was used as a mortar.

Another slick on a low boulder.

On the side of the boulder that faces the biggest concentration of grinding slicks there are some very basic pictograph elements – two white circles, and a red line.

Here they are up close.

Not really anything more to see with DStretch. They almost look like a natural part of the rock, but they were fairly thickly painted.

Down below, on the lower corner of the boulder just to the left of these elements, there are some petroglyphs.

These look like meaner lines – very basic.

Higher up on the side of the boulder is the best panel at the site.

Here we find a squiggle line and a circle.  Not much to see here, but these are definitely real petroglyphs.

And that’s it … one lonely, basic little site, sitting all by itself. We looked around but found no other trace of habitation. And once we packed up the boulder was again left alone in the desert.