PETFO: Martha's Butte.

  I wanted to take Katie out for a hike to Martha's Butte, a petroglyph, petrified log and Anasazi site about a mile off the road.  There is a famous, (and rare), vertical log partly excavated there as well.

Couple of bottles of water, the Fuji roll film camera and a map in my head.

Easy walk with many footprints to follow.

Sitting on her butte in the shade.

Petroglyph solstice spiral.  Still lined up and accurate, though the people who read it are long gone.  It's October.

Many of the 13-humped snakes are calendars, but this one had about 20 humps with more broken off.

Petroglyphs scattered on boulders, many of which have moved due to erosion in the last 1000 years.

Never know how to read those.

Made a little tricky one-handed climb to the summit blocks.

Southwest  summit block.

From the top I could see blocks that had fallen away and also several other likely petroglyph sites.

North over the bentonite shoulder.

Tourist.

Fuji laying on the North Block.

Maps?  Charms? Claims?

Kokopelli.

Pilgrim in Uggs.

Katie hiked barefoot most of the way back.  

  All kinds of sign, human animals, coyotes, skunk, deer, bobcat in the wash.  Still surface water here and there and they were exploiting it.  Katie walked through every texture.  By the time we got back to the 4-Runner her feet had a solid coating of high-quality Petrified Forest desert mud.  She sat down and I washed her feet with half a jug of unsweetened ice tea that our weekend visitors had left.  It was a very good use for that tea.