Goin' Mobile-A Dance Gypsy's tour of the country

    Just a real slow and relaxing day today. Spent the morning reading the paper, taking the dog for a walk and then grabbing some late breakfast. Once done with that I headed over to the movie theater to meet up with my friend George. We were going to do an early boys night out movie this afternoon so that we would both have a little more daylight this evening to be out and about.
The only problem with our plan was that there weren't any great boys night out movies out there. We had pretty much seen everything we all thought was worth seeing, so it was with some trepidation that we settled on the new 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' movie to watch. A totally unrealistic plot of course, but then what part of mutant ninja turtles isn't? And yet it was actually pretty entertaining overall with even a few pretty good visual and audio jokes thrown in. That being said.... I doubt this will ever be a movie I'll purchase for future viewing.
    Had a nice late lunch with George after the movie. We went over to a place he knew of, Lansdowne Inn, or some such thing. It's suppose to be some kind of Irish bar, but the only thing Irish about it might of been some of the scotch they had on hand. Otherwise it was pretty much your everyday sports bar with sports bar kind of food. They do put together a pretty good Reuben sandwich though, and that, along with some fries and ice tea was a very nice meal.
    Headed on home after dinner with only a short stop at Home Depot for some gorilla glue. The stuff I used the other day to glue my truck mirror back together with didn't really do much, so now it's time to pull out the big guns and see if this stuff will work.
    Another walk for Rhodie this evening and then some time spent on the back deck reading my book while I watched the local flock of white pelicans returning from some other lake or pond for the night.
    Still need to finish up about 50 more pictures from the river trip so I'm going to get on those right now. Here are a few more I got done yesterday.

Green River Canoe Trip - Aug/Sept 2014 - Part 4

Passing by some more cliffs that come right down to the water.

Another view.

The experience of paddling like this is great. It gets even better if you can share it with a great blue heron fishing on the shore.

The large formation in the distance is called the 'Butte of the Cross', because early explorers thought it looked like one I guess. It is actually made up of two separate formations that are several miles apart. I liked this picture because of the reflection in the water though.

Isn't that just so cool!

I have always thought of this rock in the river as 'George's Rock', named after a good friend of ours who painted a beautiful watercolor painting of it a few years ago.

So who can spot the Native American granary? When you get closer you can see where there were once hand and foot holds chipped into the rock face. Today you would need a ladder of some kind to reach it.

Here is another one... who can pick out the granary in this photo? Look near the center of the picture just above the dark red rock band at the bottom. These small shelters were used by the natives to store their corn and other crops, if any, in. They were usually placed high up on a cliff where it would take someone with a ladder to reach it. That way they could protect their winter food supply from marauding bands out to capture or destroy it.

There is one place on the trip where you can pull in and walk to an area that was evidently used as a food plot for growing corn and perhaps beans and squash. In the ledges above the farm land they built several small rock enclosed shelters to perhaps live in during the period spent growing their crops, or as a place to store some of them when they had harvested them. It is always one place on the river trip that I want to visit. Can you pick out some of the structures yet?

A close up of one of the shelters. Made out of native rock and mud, none of them were very big. I always thought the one rock in the lower right hand side of this one looked like it might be a dinosaur bone, but never checked it out that close to see.

This one uses a rock piece as a lintel above the doorway. Others used cedar wood for things like that.

Here you get a good perspective of how small they were. Rima is about 5'-10" so she would have a hard time stretching out inside most of them. I think people were a good deal smaller back then.

This is just a picture of some of the really cool rock formations in the area. I always got the feeling that this little community must of been a pretty happy one. I can well imagine kids playing chase and hide and seek amongst the rocks. It just feels like one day they just didn't show up any more, but it has never felt like there was a lot of death here or that this was the last place all of them ever lived. Can't explain why that feels like that to me... but it does.

A Datura, or moon flower, blossom. I have read that most parts of this plant are poisonous, but I know that many Native Americans used it as a hallucinogenic in some of their rituals.

Another small structure tucked up under an overhang. The formation in the back is known as the 'Turks Head'. It and this whole complex are located on a neck of land in between the river as it loops back on itself.

Rima is holding up a little bitty corn cob in this photo. It's only about 3 inches long and I'm pretty sure it is one I found in this structure several years ago. It is wild to think of holding something that some ancient being once chewed on. I hope it stays here a few hundred more years.