Unaweep Canyon | b e t u n a d a

PLEASE CLOSE the GATE. (Another boring high-desert ramble Wif Da Dorgz)

I don’t know what they’re keeping out, or in. Perhaps they just want to make all the motor-idiots slow down, even stop, while going from one side to the other. This gate nor fence wouldn’t deter the bighorns, below …

The Nine-Mile Hill bighorn sheep herd, part of which is pictured above, hadn’t been very visible these past few months. Today, they’re out grazing, in their full glory for all the nearby highway traffic to view.

Meanwhile, back at “the gate” Rocksea, Sleven, and Dually engage in a pre-hike sniffaroony.

We stop on a ridgetop just south of what I call East Pass to Cactus Park. View is to northwest — with snow-covered Pinyon Mesa on the horizon, and the red desert sandstone cliffs along Unaweep Canyon beyond the relatively flat Cactus Park. What would be impressively visible just a couple miles further west — unseen from this vantage point — are the massive pre-cambrian granite cliffs which displace and replace the reddish sandstone.

Turning 120-degrees to the east, we look to the shaley steep slopes of theBookcliffs. What you can’t see is that my house, along with a few thousand others, is on the valley floor before the Bookcliffs.