Day 17--Seminole Canyon Pictographs

Hurray!! Although we heard a bit of precipitation before sunrise, it was cold (41°) and windy but dry when we got up and took down the camper. We made it easily in time for the 10:00 hike to see the pictographs. Our guide took a group of 19 down into the canyon and along the mostly dry, rock, river bed to Fate Bell Annex, which is almost directly below the Visitor Center. We learned there are 3000-4000 year old pictographs throughout a 50 mile radius which are done in what is called the Pecos River style. Most are on private lands but these are some of the easiest to access. They are also very well documented because a couple in the 1930s trekked into the area and made painstaking copies of them. The park does less frequent hikes to the Panther Cave and to the cave we could see to our left, where the canyon takes a turn. But these are magnificent and were what we had stayed to see. They are in good shape, considering their age, partly because no sunlight shines on them, but the Amistad Reservoir to the east of here has raised the humidity in the area, which is taking a toll. As we had noticed in the area before, there is a lot of pock-marked limestone, very much like what we found on Drummond Island. It is full of fossilized sea shells and creatures, and that in itself is interesting to see. But the mysterious pictographs drew us into their spell. No tribes in the area claim their makers as ancestors and so there is no oral history to explain them. Careful analysis shows that some that were drawn 4000 years ago were painted over 3000 years ago, but no one knows why. Everyone from archaeologists to school children enjoy making up their own stories and interpretations but they remain, as they have always been, a mystery to enjoy. After our hike we drove west on Highway 90 to Marathon. We decided to stay at the motel/RV park there so we could do laundry and use their Wi-Fi to update the blog and check email for a night before heading to non-electrical camping in Big Bend National Park. We were surprised to find many of the people we had just hiked into the canyon with, all with the same plan. However, the Wi-Fi was down and they couldn’t say if it would be fixed before we leave tomorrow. L We borrowed a cable and hooked into their cable TV and learned of the latest blizzard to hit the east coast. As everyone we have talked to, from Pennsylvania, Quebec, Nova Scotia, Wisconsin, etc. agrees, it may be unusually cool here but at least we don’t have to shovel this!