Travels With Connie #21 Painted Rock

Sometimes I know exactly where I am going. In that case it’s easy, pick a route and go.

More often I have an idea where I’d like to end up, and generally speaking a direction to go.

Once in a while I just follow the front wheel and see where it takes me.

Painted Rock

This mound of rock is collectively known as Painted Rock. It is administered by BLM and includes a campground. It's roughly 75 miles east of me, which makes it very near.

It is one of the largest petroglyph sites in the world, with over 800 individual glyphs. Widely presumed to be a HoHokum site, some of the glyphs are unknown in either the HoHokum culture, or in the Patayn culture to the west. It is apparent that these were a people that lived in between the two great cultures around 1000 AD.

Sunup Detail

The huge majority of the glyphs are on the east side ot the structure. It is obvious that sunup was important to the people that left these glyphs, so the photographs here are taken right near sunup on the day of the Summer Solstice. The shadows here are ranging off to the NorthWest.

I came here on the solstice to see if there were any shadow lines that might be part of the mystery. I have also been here on both Equinoxes and the Winter Solstice. The focus of the glyphs is clearly oriented to the Summer Solstice.

Sunup Glyph Detail.

As you can see from this photo, not all the marks are glyphs. Juan Batista deAnza left his mark here in 1775. The Mormon Battalion was here about 70 years later. The most recent was scratched here in the 1960s when the place was listed on the National Historic Register.

Sunup Line

I really found fewer glyphs that specifically used the sunup line on the Solstice than I expected. There is a window in the greatest HoHokum monument (Casa Grande) that is only fully illuminated on the Summer Solstice. It is another of the reasons why I think this site is mis categorized as HoHokum.

Glyph Detail

I hope you have enjoyed this, I'll return to Painted Rock tomorrow.

All words and photographs in this post are mine. For better or worse

You want some real motorcycle travel? Check out Velimir. That’s some kind of motorcycle writing.

I am a huge fan of the Minnow Support Project and Adsactly. Both have had an enormous impact on my success here at Steemit. You might want to check them out…

---

Vote @adsactly-witness for Steem witness!

• open: https://steemit.com/~witnesses

In the bottom of the page type in: adsactly-witness and select vote.

All small letters and without the @ sign

Or give us a direct vote here

Our Witness proposal

Thank you!

---