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Published: March 14th 2019
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blog 03-10-19 Jeep Tour
Sunday morning and the first day of the time change and the jeep tour starts at 9 am requiring me to be there at 8:45, oh, the pressure! I got up at 4:30 to see if I could photograph the milky way but it was cloudy in the east. I didn't have to get up because it was an hour earlier. I'm so confused..
The tour took off on time with a family of 3 included and our trusty guide Dean. We were going on private land that adjoins the national park but as it turned out it was much dryer than the park was. No wonder they didn't include it in the bounties.
It turns out that Dean is quite knowledgeable about the plants and geology and he told us so much I'm still processing it. He talked about the plants that the natives used for all kinds of illness and life enhancing benefits. He cut a piece of yucca and showed us how it was scraped to reveal the long fibers inside that were put together to make rope, used in sewing and even horse bridles. The end had a point that
was a built in needle.
Another plant was made into tea for intestinal upset, and another that he uses as a room freshener. He talked about the formation of the mountains and the very sad destruction of the land starting with overgrazing in the mid 1800s then mercury was mined needing hot fires to process so the trees were systematically cut down and burned until there was not a tree left. It left the land dry and barren. There are efforts to regrow trees along the river, hopefully other efforts will pay off in time.
Back at the home base I took Watson for a walk then settled down to rest a bit. I was moving the next day so I had to pack up and straighten up so it wasn't such a chore in the morning.
About 4:30 Pat came and picked me up and drove to the site of some petrogliphs we had heard about. We had to walk about 1/2 mile but we found the rock and studied it a bit. We brought chairs and a drink so we set up our little camp and proceeded to enjoy the desert and our coctails. The
conversation went to the designs on the rock, then we started seeing tepees on the upper face of the mountain. Picture.
Then there was a strange white circle in the sky. Was it a smoke signal, a ufo, what? Picture We better get home.....
We stopped at a Mexican restaurant for dinner. It was open air with seating wherever you could find it. We sat at a picnic table with 2 other people who were enjoying their meal already. Yes, they were from Houston. We had a lovely conversation with them as we enjoyed our meal 1/2 needing to come home with me.
It was a fun night and bed sure felt good.
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