I want to show you more of the Carrizo Plain. It’s mainly known for Soda Lake which, as I mentioned in last blog, is a salt lake. The shores are white with salt but there was a lot of water due to the recent rain so you can’t see it very well. My main interest in the Plain was Painted Rock. “Painted Rock is widely considered to be among the finest examples of Native American pictograph painting in the world. Although the original painted panels have been damaged, largely due to turn of the century souvenir collectors who purposely removed sections of paint, a significant amount of the paintings are intact. Painted Rock continues to hold important spiritual values for contemporary Native American people who often visit the site for ceremonies and religious observances,” said Tamara Whitley, archaeologist in the BLM Bakersfield Field Office. I have pictograph photos from Hawaii, Nevada and New Mexico so I was anxious to see these and get some pictures. Before the tour started (guided tours only) the ranger showed us photos of the pictographs before tourists destroyed most of them. They were incredible. We hiked about a mile across the plain to Painted Rock. You can get a sense of the scale of the place from this picture.
These are a couple of the paintings on the walls. There were several but they were hard to photograph. Up in one of the hollow areas barn owls are nesting. One of the owls flew off but the other stayed with the nest. But it wasn’t long until I felt like we were being watched. When I looked up I found I was right. See the tiny spec on top of the Rock? Hiking back I wanted to try to capture the sky. The clouds were incredible that day. One last shot across Soda Lake, the hills in the distance…..The San Andreas fault!
One last note, I got a call today from Base Natural Resources and the little owl chick is going fine, eating and gaining weight.
Leave a comment