Utah's AMAZING Parowan Gap is in the middle of nowhere! #utah

Hey Sight Seers! We're making our way to go do some shopping down in, I believe it's Cedar City here in Utah. And because we're so close and it's basically on the way, I didn't want to pass up the opportunity to show you the Parowan Gap petroglyphs. There's also, if I can find them, dinosaur tracks to be seen here as well. But first, I need to point this out to you Sight Seers. I don't know if you realize this, but here is tumbleweed mania. I'm talking about every tumbleweed in the 50 mile radius of here must have rolled up and landed here because this is just crazy. All the tumbleweeds that are piled up. Unbelievable. And I don't know if you know this, but tumbleweeds, because of their nature of just tumbling around in the desert, they actually can be hundreds of years old. Like this tumbleweed over here was probably rolling around out in the desert back in the day of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Or something. Anyways, I just found it utterly fascinating that there were all these tumbleweeds just piled up here. Which, I know, we stopped to see petroglyphs. Let's go check out some petroglyphs. Oh look, here's one just rolling free willy. Hasn't joined the others in the corral back there. We're coming up to our first storyboard, or picture board, if you will. Basically, from what I understand, throughout they have these nice placards detailing what you're looking at. In this particular instance, the storyboard is basically talking about wildlife at the gap. The type of animals that you would see here and perhaps inspire the different petroglyphs that can be found here. There's been a lot of speculation in the intent or the meaning behind the various petroglyphs that can be found. It is believed by Native Americans that this particular site where all these petroglyphs can be found here in Parowan Gap was a sort of spiritual place. There are others though who hypothesize that some of the petroglyphs may not be related to anything spiritual, but maybe actually giving directions, almost like maps. I'm not an expert. I haven't done any research on this. It was just more of a whim, kind of just a spur-of-the-moment thing to come out here and just look at all the different petroglyphs that can be seen here. It is a beautiful site. It came highly recommended by the woman that manages the campground where we're staying. She recommended this. I hope you can see up there. I'll try to zoom in on it. It looks like some spaces that were hallowed out in the rock face. It looks man-made. I mean, I know that the wind and the elements besides the wind, you know, sand and water can all make, you know, impressions in stone depending on the type of stone, but to me that almost looks like that was done by human forces. Well, here's something that was definitely done by human forces of more modern times. You can see somebody had carved into the side of the rock their name and the year. Leo Roscoe, 1947. Something Cope, 48. If you didn't know, by the way, this road actually takes you all the way to Parowan, which according to this storyboard, Parowan was the first settlement in southern Utah and that happened in 1851. Then it also goes on to talk about when is a rock inscription a historic relic and when does it become vandalism. Well, over here you can see there have been some inscriptions dating back to like 1976. I want to say probably even 1993 if that's accurate. This one here, 1125. Well, that's not even possible because I didn't even read it right. It's actually 1125 of 1983. Regardless, it is now illegal to scratch your name or carve anything into the side of any of these stones because they have found that there are so many ancient petroglyphs, ancient petroglyphs here, that to do so would be defacing history. Not to mention with the Native Americans considering this to be a spiritual site it would be really irreverent to them. Wow, this particular rock face has quite a few of them. I just zoom in a little bit more. There we go. I'm gonna zoom in here too. There's a raven up there just minding his own business, hanging out. Well, this is cool. These you can actually walk right up to. They tell you not to touch them because the oils on your hands could ruin them, which obviously I'm not gonna do that. It's nice to be able to get up close and see them a little bit more clearly. This one here reminds me of a sun. And then you have these designs here. I wonder what's being told in this picture. Wow, it's just unbelievable if you just keep looking in the rock face you can find more and more of them. Here, let me show you. You have all of these here and then if we look up way up there. Now I'm gonna have to zoom in so you can see it more clearly. You can see there's petroglyphs there and somebody's nest. Maybe it was at Raven's. Did they build nests? I don't know the first thing about Raven's either. I'll tell you one thing, being out and seeing so much in our world really drives home how much I don't know, how little I know. I don't know if I should keep going this way or if I should head back to easier ground, especially given the fact that I'm wearing flip-flops. Well, looks like I've come to a dead end anyway so I'm gonna have to turn around. Oh, there you are. There's a petroglyph. And then here we're at more eye level at some of the ones I was looking at. And then I'm just gonna turn and you can just get a view. Isn't that just amazing how beautiful that is? And then look here. Wow. This is a really neat spot. I was just gonna say, if you listen closely, you can hear the hum of bees. I think they're pollinating these flowers on these bushes, which the bushes actually have a really nice fragrance. One of those times where I wish I had smell-o-vision so you could smell the smells that I'm smelling. There are times though that you definitely don't want to smell the smells I'm smelling, depending on where we're at. Anyways, moving on. You'll notice I'm kind of speaking in hushed tones. I just feel like this is one of those spots where you really should just be quiet and respect nature and what you're seeing here. And it's just really difficult for me to want to speak real loud because of that. Here's some more petroglyphs. This particular storyboard here talks about, you know, is it art or a language? And it does give an interpretation by one of the indigenous tribes of Utah, what the different symbols mean. And it also talks about how the images were made. By the way, if you didn't know, this place is on the National Register of Historic Places. It was placed on the register in, if I remember correctly, 1969. This next little bit, I'm gonna... just so you can experience the ambient sounds here in Parowan Gap. The sounds of nature. Maybe it'll spark some spiritual awakening. Maybe not. But I just think for a place like this you really just kind of have It's known as a wind gap because the waterway that created it has disappeared. And it's true. It felt like when I was in the gap itself, like I was in a wind tunnel. It was just really windy in there. It's breezy out here but nowhere near the amount that it was in the gap. Well why don't we see if we can find those dinosaur tracks, Marty? Look, somebody's got horses. Must be getting them ready for a ride. They look like they're all saddled up. I guess you can camp out this way. There's some BLM land that you can camp on. No services though. You know, no water, no dump, no garbage. You have to pack it in, pack it out, be self-contained. They got a pit toilet that's full to the rim. Yeah, I try not to look down when I'm in one of them. Just saying. Well, we made it. It looks like we're gonna have to do a little bit of hiking. Marty's already waiting for me by the sign. Let's go find out the deets, the details. Somebody busted it all off. Somebody came in 2011 or 2010 and busted part of the thing off. Little bastards. Despite that, we're gonna go take a look. Anyways, you can see they've got a little handy-dandy marker. Smaller than my hand but in the shape of a prehistoric bird foot. And we're gonna follow the trail. Marty, you coming? If I can hack it. Well, you can only try. I need my oxygen bottle. Well, why don't you bring it? There's a bit thinner up here. And one of us is feeling the effects a little bit more than the other. Care to guess which one? So far sightseers, I'm not seeing anything that looks remotely like a dinosaur footprint. Not that I even know what a dinosaur footprint is supposed to look like. But I can tell you that so far all I'm seeing are rocks and mud, dirt. You know, there was a little section back there where in the rock itself it kind of looked like maybe a fossil of maybe a dragonfly. A super-sized dragonfly body. But that's all I've seen so far. Since we're on the subject of rocks, I thought I'd point these out here. Look like some interesting sandstone pieces. Maybe perhaps there's, you know, dinosaur footprints embedded in these. But if there are, I'm just not seeing it. You can see Marty is way, way ahead of me. What the heck? I don't think he's into this as much as I am. What? Did you find something? All right, well I'll catch up to you here in a minute. This is where maybe having some of those interpretive storyboards, signs, whatever you want to call them, placards, would come in handy. This here, I believe, is what Marty was referring to as a Native American kitchen. Although perhaps this is where, you know, some ancient dinosaur-like creature came and stepped through. Maybe making these little path marks. I don't know. Your guess is as good as mine. One thing certain sights here is, even if we don't find the dinosaur tracks like we thought we were, the view here is so spectacular. It was definitely worth a stop. You can tell spring is in the air, besides my constantly dripping nose from pollen and other allergies. If you take a moment to stop and look down at the ground, you can see all the little wildflowers that are springing up and blooming. These here are yellow. They look yellow-white. You know, they kind of start off yellow and they turn white. And then over here, I saw some pink and white ones. They look like pink and white stars. I'm not sure what kind they are, but they are really pretty. I haven't seen that before. Because most of the time when we're out in the desert, we're gone by this time of year. That and we haven't spent a whole lot of time in what they call the high desert. We have spent some time in high desert, like New Mexico I think would be classified as high desert, but not in springtime. And most of our desert experience has been, you know, Quartzsite, Arizona, Death Valley, the Salton Sea, you know, in Southern California there. And I don't know if you know this site series, but this is my first time exploring Utah I believe I mentioned it in a video that I posted to YouTube or that I will be posting to YouTube, but seeing as you're probably gonna get this before then, you wouldn't have known that. And I'm just thrilled to finally be able to explore Utah. It is such a beautiful state. Speaking of thrilling, I think we just found our first set of dinosaur tracks. Apparently this here is an indicator that you're supposed to look and look for a track. Well it just so happens that here, inside of this boulder, it kind of looks like we have a couple of tracks. Hmm. What do you think? Marty, do you think this is an actual, honest-to-goodness dinosaur track? The hole? No, the track is right here. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense, doesn't it? Well there you go, site seers. It's a good thing Marty was along because obviously I had no clue and we'd be still looking at holes or gouges inside the boulder. I probably don't say this often enough. Actually, I probably never say it, but Marty is quite the guy and he knows a lot. Well here we are coming up on our second set of prints because this here, although it may not be one of those lovely storyboards, it's a marker indicating that we should be looking for a print. And if I'm not mistaken, it's right here. Let me zoom out just a bit. But if you look, you can kind of see that three-toed imprint right here and then a second one right behind it. One, two, three. You know, it's like as if one dinosaur took a step and then another one following took a step right on top of the other print. Well I just spotted another marker up there in the stones. Why don't we go check it out quick? There. There we go. Right there. Here's our sign. Now where is that footprint? Where in the world is that dinosaur footprint? I'm looking and looking and I'm not seeing anything. You know what this reminds me of? This reminds me of, you know, those pictures where you're supposed to like look at all these dots and then somehow within these dots there's an actual picture and you have to like look at it for a certain length of time or the certain way and all of a sudden you'll see it. Well guess what? I was one of those that could like never see the picture no matter how long I looked at it. Which is why I think we're gonna mosey on because I'm not finding no dinosaur footprint in this. For posterity purposes I thought I'd take one last look from a distance and yet I still don't see it. Too bad Marty wasn't up here with me. I'm sure he'd spot it.