The Caves of Anubis

I stumbled across a book and the reference of a National Geographic article online about the Caves of Anubis when I was researching Oklahoma pan handle caves with the hopes of a good spring break road trip. I went to the National Geographic website, but I couldn’t find anything. I did find The Hitching Post Ranch which offers historical tours of the area. They take you to different caves on their land that have Celtic and Anasazi petroglyphs, a petrified tree, the tri-state marker and some dinosaur tracks. I asked Mrs Apple about the Caves of Anubis. She said it wasn’t on her land. At the end of the tour, she said she could show us the Caves of Anubis, and that she didn’t think the owners would mind. They seemed to be friends. So we got to see them!

There is a problem with caves being vandalized. No spray paint, but people carving their names , dates and pictures on top of the petroglyphs that have been there at least 1200 yrs or more. And because these were not her caves, Mrs Apple didn’t want to be responsible for leading potential vandals to someone else’s petroglyphs. So we were careful about parking the car. And I will follow suit and not give directions to these caves.

From a distance, there is really not too much special about the cave. Compared to other rock formations in the area, it doesn’t even look worth climbing into. The caves are set above ground level and we had to climb a ledge that was about 5-6 ft to get into them. It’s an easy climb.

There is a variety of petroglyphs in these caves. We saw Celtic drawings similar to other ones in the region. We was the same tally marks that Pigeon cave is covered in, but here I saw that they were crossed like we do our fifth tally mark. There were also animals, plants and people. The sun was there, and I thought that some looked like stars.

The first cave was the most impressive. It was actually the most impressive cave I saw in the whole region. There were people, there was a buffalo, a horse with a rider. There was a tent with two people next to it, the woman is thought to be a fertility goddess. There was what looked like an Egyptian jackal wearing what the Egyptian Pharaohs wore as a crown. Hence the name “Caves of Anubis”. And the jackal was facing a sun with an eye like shape. Which brings the Egyptian sun god Ra to mind.

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The second cave has 2 “windows” connecting it to the bigger cave. But I’m not small enough to fit so I had to rock climb around the dividing wall. It was exciting to know that my time at the rock wall payed off in a practical way. Not to mention the third of my childhood that I spent in trees. Actually, come to think of it, working out at Thrive has really helped on this trip too. But back on the subject of the caves: there were alot of tally marks in the second cave, not so many pictures. Well, there were pictures. But they were more shapes. Almost like letters to a primitive language. But nothing as interesting, varied and preserved as the first cave. The second cave was connected to a third cave. It was like a basement cave off to the left. The shape and the crevices in it reminded me of the inside of a human skull. I took anatomy in collage and I work in the medical field.

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The petroglyphs were a little easier to see in life. The shadows made taking pictures a little hard. the jackel is at the top of this last picture. Ironically, the sun is in the shade. You will have to look really close to see it. There is a second animal at the bottom. He’s outlined in chalk but is still hard to see.

The road trip was exhausting but it was totally worth it. It would have been worth it without seeing this cave. But this cave made it even more memorable. When I walk through museums, its going to be so much more fun to walk through the early human history parts because I’ll have seen stuff similar to what they’re talking about. And maybe I’ll run across a museum that will help me understand these particular petroglyphs better. It’s still crazy to think that Celtic, Anasazi (Native American) and Egyptian like petroglyphs are all within a 10 mile radius of each other, if not in the same cave!

Black Mesa/ Cimmaron petroglyphs. Part 2

For spring break in 2015 two of my siblings and I went up to the edge of the Oklahoma pan handle and took the historic tour offered bye the Hitching Post Bed and Breakfast/Ranch. This is part two of of our 6 hour tour. Going on this tour was like being in a living museum. In a museum you walk from one exhibit to the next and look at them from behind glass. But this tour was even better because you had to drive, hike and even do some rock climbing to get to the different caves. It felt like you were exploring, and to know that there were more out there made it even more exciting. And there was nothing to keep you from touching the petroglyphs. If I owned them I probably would have said “do not touch”.

We started the tour by going to different caves on the Hitching Post Ranch. After Pigeon Cave we drove over to a small, nearby mesa. We had to drive very carefully because there was cacti everywhere and we didn’t want to get a flat tier. For this spot, we had to hike uphill, then do some rock climbing to get to the Celtic petroglyphs. Above the rock drawings there was a large crevice in the rock and about 6-7 feet up there was a petrified tree. There were more petroglyphs in the crevice as well. I have seen petrified trees before, but none that were in a rock wall. My brother loved bounding around the rocks. Nia and I did as well, but we had other things to see before sun down so we limited ourselves a bit more than Cristian did. 

Now it was time to drive to the dinosaur tracks! To get there we drove almost to the state line. We passed the parking lot were the hiking trail that goes up THE Black Mesa starts. Mrs Apple said that the hike would take roughly 4 hours. It had rained recently so some of the dinosaur tracks were filled with water and mud. They are on private property but they’re right off the road. It would seem the owners don’t value them as much as others might because they let them fill in. Mrs Apple said that at one point there was a different set visible as well. This trail of tracks appears out of the mud and disappears back into the mud about 20 ft later. I don’t know much about dinosaur tracks, but they looked like the ornithopod (duck-billed dinosaur) tracks that are at the Picketwire Canyon land set.

After the dinosaur tracks we went to the tri-state marker. It wasn’t very far. I was expecting to be at the southern corner of the panhandle. Nope, we were at the northern corner. It was fun hopping around in three states: Oklahoma, Colorado and New Mexico. I think Cristian enjoyed it the most. He stood in Colorado and called a friend who is from Colorado. He also stood on the marker and did the Karate Kid crane pose.  

I did forget one stop that we made. In the 1930’s, the  WPA (a program started to create jobs during the great depression) was building a road in the panhandle and they uncovered a dinosaur! Now there’s a huge hole in the side of the hill, literally right next to the road. And on top of the hill is a life size replica of one of the thigh bones that was found. Its 6 ft. tall. Jane Apple didn’t know what kind of dinosaur it was, but said it was 2 stories high and now resides at the Sam Noble museum in OKC.

The last thing we did was go to the Caves of Anubis. There is enough that I can say about them that I’ve decided to write about them separately. There are other things to do in this area. You can climb the Black Mesa. With permission you might be able go hiking and explore caves (look for more petroglyphs). There is the Hitching Post Bed and Breakfast as well as the Black Mesa Bed and Breakfast. I was told that this part of Oklahoma has more bird varieties than any other part of the state. There is the Elting Lake and fishing is allowed. People go hunting around here. It is also a great place to come and watch a meteor shower from. This part of the pan handle is where the rocky mountain terrain meets the great plains, so you have wildlife and plants from both regions. We had great weather that day. But I’ve been in the dessert during the summer. I would suggest you come visit during the spring or fall. If you are within a day’s drive of this place, I highly recommend it. It is a great road trip, you’re out doors, its historically educational and exciting. The historical tour does cost $100, but if you split it with a few other people, it’s really worth it. This was a fun and unique experience. And Mr and Mrs Apple were very nice people.

Black Mesa/Cimmaron Petroglyphs. Part 1

Last week was spring break. Only one of my collage age siblings, went somewhere or did something fun for the vacation. So, I came up with a road trip idea. I did some research and made a phone call. We decided to stay in Oklahoma (mostly) and go look at some petroglyphs and dinosaur tracks in the tip of the pan handle.

I found the Hitching Post Bed and Breakfast/Ranch online. The owners give historical tours of the area and take you to see the petroglyphs, dinosaur tracks, petrified tree and the tri-state marker. They recommended that for the tour you wear jeans and socks. They should have recommended hiking boots (not that I have any). I did not realize until we were on the tour that the petroglyphs are:  1. all on private property and 2. scattered in caves all across the black mesa region. There are quite a few petroglyphs on the Apple’s (the owners of the Hitching Post ranch) land. So its alot of driving, walking and we did not see them all. Jane Apple doesn’t know were all of them are and she and her family have been hiking these hills since the 1800’s. She said her son found some more writing in caves around Mummy’s Cave. But she did not know exactly were. A person, or even a team, could easily spend a whole summer exploring the caves in the area looking for cave writings. One thing that upset Mrs Apple, was that people like to write their names on the rock wall. There is recent writing over/on top of the really old stuff. And by recent I mean a few from the 1800:’s and turn of the century, but after the 70’s the number of “recent dates” dates skyrockets. Its kind of cool, but they should have picked a different spot.

Our first stop was Coronada’s Signature. Which didn’t mean anything to me until she started speaking of a Spaniard searching for the 7 cities of gold. Yes! Then I remembered. Cibola. The fabled city of gold that the Spaniards had gone on expeditions to find. They came through the pan handle and carved Coronatta 15_7 into the rock wall. I was a little distracted when when Jane said the specific date, and I had trouble reading the 3rd number of the date. It was either a 0, a 6 or a 4. But she’ll tell you when you go. This location is the most easily accessed place we went to, other than the dinosaur quarry.

On the other side of the rock there were some Celtic petroglyphs. Wait, did I say that right? Native American? Nope, not Native America. People who know what they are talking about came out and took a look at the writings and said that they were Celtic. There are several universities who have come out to study geology, fossils and to look at the writings. Mrs Apple said that they are in the process of preparing a place so that Universities can bring groups to study the area. Actually, most of the petroglyphs in the area are said to be Celtic. I did hesitate to believe this. But they’re there. There are theories to explain them that involve land bridges, peninsulas and the theory that alot of this area was at one point underwater and the Celtics sailed over.

Here is a side note. If you like rock climbing, you will love this place. It is a rock climbing playground. Its great for kids and anyone who likes adventure.

Our next stop was Mummy Cave. It was about a mile walk one way. This is when I realized I should have worn boots, the cacti were hard to avoid. On the way, I asked how it got its name. In the mid 1900’s (its scary that we can say that now) some local kids were hiking and came across a mummy in one of the caves. It was a Native American woman and her baby. Being curious I asked a few questions about the mummy. The description that I got sounded very similar to the burial practices of the Inca and Nazca of South America. A burial jar and the body buried in a fetal position. The mummy might have been Anasazi. This cave had petroglyphs as well, but they were Anasazi, not Celtic. The Anasazi cave writings were red. And in this cave they were right above were the body had been buried.

On our walk back we stopped by some corrals to get a drink of water. Windmills were invented to pump water from the ground, but this pump uses a solar panel. It made me realize that in Oklahoma, it is very windy, but its even more sunny.  The water was really good. It was clear, cold, and tasted really good.

The next cave we went to was Pidgeon Cave (guess why). This cave was covered with lines. There are rows of tally marks lining the ridges of the cave walls. It is thought that it was a calendar of some sort. Or that someone was keeping track of something. Jane Apple doesn’t usually bring people to see Pidgeon Cave. She took us to see them because we were interested, and were in good enough shape to add it into the tour. And she thought that we would like to see a variety. After seeing Pidgeon Cave, I started to recognize the tally lines in the other petroglyphs as well.

The Historical tour took us 6 hours. Now, we did go to more places than she normally takes people. But its alot to write down. So, I’m going to end this for now and continue on in another blog post.

The Antelope Hills

The Antelope Hills are on the South Canadian river south of Arnett and north of Roll. The towns are small and smaller. I grew up seeing the 3 plateaus from a distance. And I always wanted to climb them. It was child hood fantasy: “I want to climb that mountain that  I see everyday out my window”. Oklahoma has beautiful sunsets, and the antelope hills make those sunsets even more beautiful.

One fun fact about the Antelope hills is that they were a landmark during the famous cattle drives of the old west. If you’re north of the river on highway 283 you’ll drive bye a historical landmark sign for the Chisholm trail. There may be several landmarks for that. Highway 283 also goes through Packsaddle, which isn’t much of a place. Its more of an intersection with a bar and grill. My grandmother told me that Packsaddle was given its name because when Custer and his army rode through there, they dumped their packsaddles there. About an hour’s drive south is were Custer slaughtered an indian village. The Washita battle field is fenced off, and there is a museum called the Washita Battle National Historic site. Anyways, there is plenty of history in the area. Obviously not all of it is good. Back to my favorite landmark.

One of the pioneer women who lived on the original 160 acre homesteads in the area had been an artist. There is a museum dedicated to her art (Metcalf museum). Granny and I had nothing to do so we went over for a visit. On the way I asked if we could stop bye the antelope hills. FYI there are no signs. And I’m pretty sure its private property. But we drove around until we found them. I was so excited. One child hood dream checked off the bucket list! At least this child hood dream is physically possiblity.

The road curves around a single plateau. If you look up, you might see a barb wire fence that looks like a graph of the 1930 stock market crash. I was impressed that someone even bothered to put that fence up there. Evidence that someone got a good workout the day it was built. Granny and I stopped the truck when we were on the side facing the river. I scampered up the clumps of grass, rocks, an occasional barrel cactus. Granny took a picture while I savored the moment and enjoyed the view. I tried to see the ranch on the other side of the river, but all the river bends and cliffs over there looked the same. Come to think of it, I need to go back there and climb them again. I was surprised at how short the hills were. I’m more often looking up at them from the river basin, or seeing them from a distance. So they always look big. But up close they really aren’t too big.

In summary, I love the Antelope Hills. Its always disappointing to drive bye them at night when they aren’t visible. For obvious reasons. They sleep too.

Before I end this, I need to make something clear. There are NO saguaro cacti in this part of the country. NONE. You have to go further west to see those. Maybe Amarillo has them, maybe you have to go further west than that. But saguaro cacti do not grow naturally in western Oklahoma. I saw a western print of the antelope hills in an antique store. The angle was about from were I normally see them from, and the artist had put in saguaro cacti. If you are an artist, remember this little rant.

Picketwire Canyonlands – dinosaur tracks!

In 2013 my whole family drove up to Trinidad Colorado for a wedding. If you’re ever passing through Trinidad, or spending the night, they have an amazing (and fancy) Italian restaurant were the waiters will sing to you. It might be called Rino’s. Give it some thought when you do drive through. Since we were driving all the way up to Colorado, I thought we should do something fun as siblings. Mother said something about dinosaur tracks and after spending some time on google, I found the Picketwire Canyonlands.

As I understood, the tracks are one of the largest sets of tracks known. The signs made it sound like it was on private property and that the owners allowed people to hike down to them. They were found when some people were out horseback riding when the creek/river was low. If the creek has been running over them this long, I wonder what they would have looked like without all the water damage.

We left Trinidad around 8 am and drove NE towards La Junta. There are several towns on the map between Trinidad and La Junta. But they aren’t really there, they’re mostly ghost towns. So, make sure your gas tank is full when you leave either of the two towns that are actually there. In 2013 there were no road signs saying “Picketwire Canyonlands turnoff” or anything like that. There may be now, I don’t know. We had printed the directions out from map quest and after driving about the right distance we started looking for signs. I expected a sign, but I had the feeling that the road number given by map quest would match up with the county road number. And that’s exactly what it was. Luckily it was on top of some kind of red octagonal sign that helped it stand out a bit.

 After we turnded off onto the dirt road, it was back roads, picket fences, cacti and jack rabbits the rest of the way. At the end of the road, the very end, there was a camps sight. That means you keep driving, you drive down the hills towards the cedar trees, over the cattle guard, and past the “private property signs”.  The tracks are on private property. The owners are kind enough to allow people onto their land to see them. At the campsite, all the camping spots were arranged in a circle and they had a circle drive to go with them. After driving the complete circle and having no other place to go, we decided that this must be were we get off. Near the bathrooms there was a plaque that gave directions to the dinosaur tracks. It was permission to hop fences. Except it was a metal bar that kept people from driving down the road instead another barb wire fence. 

We’ve been hiking before. And this IS the dessert. So we too alot of water. ALOT. And we drank it all. We also knew we’d be there during lunch time so we took 2 or 3 boxes of kashi cereal bars. According to the plaque, it was 5.4 miles to the dinosaur tracks, one way. That means that the whole trek would be 10.8 miles, and you might as well round that up to 11. But we are young, right? We were all in decent shape. And we’d be walking so no big deal. It takes no effort to walk. And in normal circumstances, it doesn’t. The hike took us 8 hrs (including all the horsing around we did). We were exhausted bye the end.

From the campsite you have to walk down a rock and shale hill. It kind of felt like it could be turned into a broad stair case, and there were some steps built in with a few old rail road ties. Then we walked the first half of the way on a sandy path. We ran across some hikers and they said that the trek was nothing (lies!). We had alot of fun getting creative with camera. Actually, we took 3 cameras and only 1 of them had enough energy to take pictures bye the time we actually got to our destination. The second half of the journey was up and down hills on a rocky path. Somewhere close to the half way point there was an old mission and a cemetery. Of course we stopped to look at the old head stones. There were some faint images on one but other than that, nothing. The mission looked like it had been a one room adobe/brick building. And there wasn’t much left to it. While we were snooping around, some interesting ppl came walking up with hiking sticks. And wearing something that looked like ponchos. In a very remote place like that, it is always wise to aproach/be aproached by strangers with caution. They said they were flute players and they were walking around the canyons looking for spots with good echos. That explained the funny looking pouches on their backs. Low and behold, they pulled out their flutes. Their group had a name and they had a recorded cd too. They turned out to be nice people.

After the cemetary, I mean the mission, we came across some pretty cool boulders. Yeah, boulders, bigger than houses! So, we stopped. Taking pictures was one of the most fun aspects of the this hike. We got some fun ones.

There are signs along the way telling you how far away the dinosaur tracks are and the original ranch house. When you see the bathrooms, you’ve reached the dinosaur tracks. Get off the main track and follow the smaller one that lead down into the river. There is a sign showing the different prints to look for. Two different sizes of Theropods (predators), Sauropods ( the one with the long neck) and Ornithopod (duck billed). One sign said there was a herd of sauropods and they were being chased/followed by the theropods. And looking at the tracks, thats what it kind of looks like. The herd was mostly all headed in one direction.

It was pretty cool to be allowed to walk around were ever we wanted. In a museum, everything is behind glass. You can barely take a picture due to the dim lights and the glare from the glass. Here you could run and jump around, no security giving you the evil eye. Take pictures and only worry about the angle of the sun. It was the most fun and “interactive” museum display I’ve ever been to. I touched a freakin dinosaur track!!!!! Stood in one! Compared my body size to them. It was AWESOME! And it was very hot. So we took our shoes off and cooled our feet in the “river”, then walked around barefoot.

As I was cooling off I couldn’t help but think that the landscape looked familiar. Then I remembered that this part of the country (maybe the county) is called Purgatory. Louis L’ amour used real places when writing his books. One of his books, The Sackets  or The Sacket Brothers, was set in Purgatory and Santa Fe. I grew up watching the movies. This place, the landscape, the color of the river water and the rocks looks like the “Purgatory” scenes in the movie.

Walking towards the dinosaur tracks was really fun. We joked around, took pictures and goofed off. Heading back was different. It was the hottest part of the day and it was summer time in the dessert. And we were getting tiered. Two of us had hurt our feet slipping on rocks. One thing to remember on this hike is: there is no one to come pick you up if you decide to throw in the towel. Saying “I’m done, I’ve had enough” isn’t an option. If you’re tiered you have to keep walking. You can take a break, but at some point you have to keep going. So we took a few breaks, and kept going. We reached the point of exhaustion, and kept going. We were obviously not as in shape as we thought we were. We finally got back to the car and drove about 45 min – an hr to La Junta (opposite direction of home but the nearest food stop). Cause we were hungry for real food, and we were out of water. When I got out of the car, I could barely walk, my muscles had kind of frozen up. We all felt alot better after eating. Then we drove about 8 hrs to get home, got there at about 1-2 am.

It was definitely a fun trip. I’d love to do it again and I often recommend it to others. I do however warn them that it’s a long hike in the semi-arid Colorado dessert. You should try it sometime. Go see some real dinosaur tracks in nature, outside of a museum!