Utah trip

We got back yesterday from spending a week in southeastern Utah. Looking forward to our annual spring trip is a big part of what gets me through the last few months of winter, and the cold and windy days of early spring. We camped on Cedar Mesa, west of Blanding Utah. I really like it up there, not a lot of people on the top of the mesa (most of them are hiking in the canyons) and you can see a lot of things from the canyon rims that you might not see from the canyon floors, like these ruins nestled under a big rock on top of a peninsula:

Or these ledge ruins, which I thought were not possible to get to but maybe they crawled along the ledge from an access around the corner of the rock to the left:

We stumbled upon this metate on the mesa, notice the griding stone is a river rock probably carried there from many miles away:

Once of the amazing things about the desert is how you can usually find water if you know what to look for. The cow trails led us to this pothole on a ledge (I became aware that it looks like a penis after I stitched the two photos together, ha ha!):

I thought it was interesting how the roots of this old juniper lifted up the rocks when it fell over:

Some of the Claret Cup cacti were blooming:

We moved after a few days to a different part of the mesa, along White Canyon which we had never ridden in and weren't sure you could ride in. Turned out to be very rideable! We only turned around as it was getting late. I don't think this canyon sees much horse use, but it was actually pretty nice, about 50/50 sand and cobble stone, nothing very scary. The only real downfall of this canyon from what we saw is that it is close to the highway, which runs along it's southern edge, and you do hear cars from time to time. There were several interesting side canyons and slots, this one is in Long Canyon:

This was interesting, not sure how it happened (natural or human placed?):

A big piece of petrified wood:

A big log balanced on a rock:

It was a nice trip, not as long as we wanted but the weather changed. Today at home it snowed all morning! Hard to believe a few days ago I was having lunch on a big rock in the sun :) Speaking of that rock, I had Todd video me getting off my horse onto it. This is my typical method of dismounting, and the rock or log can be much lower, I have successfully lowered myself onto object as low as my horses' knees this way: