After my hike of the Santa Fe Trail, I made my way west to the town of Springfield, Colorado where I stayed in a hotel for the night since my tent was shredded. This turned out to be a good plan as it rained pretty hard all night. Besides the hotel, I found a surprisingly good place to eat: the Lost Dog where I got a bacon jalapeno burger and a beer.
When I awoke this morning it was still raining. I got the free breakfast and hit the road south towards the small town of Campo. I headed west into the national grassland to Picture Canyon. Upon my arrival, I realized that the place looked a bit familiar. Back in April of 2003, Noelle and I had traveled through the area in between seasonal jobs. We had visited Black Mesa, the highest point in Oklahoma and stopped at the small town of Kenton, where someone suggested we check out the tri-state point of OK/CO/NM and a place called Crack Cave. It was Crack Cave that brought us to Picture Canyon.
This visit I started my hike under overcast sky. Almost immediately after starting the hike I found a side trail that led to a cliff that featured many petroglyphs and pictographs.
I spent a pretty long time following the cliffline and looking for rock art. There is even a small cave that I climbed up into and found rock art in.
When it was finally time to move on, I headed for the location of Crack Cave. The cave itself is really just a crack in the sandstone wall. It is gated and so you cannot go inside. However, during the equinox it is possible to see rock art inside the cave illuminated by sunlight. There are stone ruins near Crack Cave,
and another wider cave with some rock art inside.
From the Crack Cave area, I made my way back to the main trail and started on the Arch Rock Loop. Soon the trail split with a sign directing equestrians to take one fork, while I took the hiker fork. It was quickly obvious why the trail split, as the hiker fork climbed some steep slickrock.
The views in this section of trail were spectacular! I climbed up the slickrock and into the flat prairie above. Here I encountered a couple of tarantulas.
Soon, the trail dropped down into another small canyon. A trickle of water flowed through creating a green oasis.
Towards the bottom of the canyon the trail forked and I could see a sandstone arch off in the distance along the trail to the right.
This would be the direction I would be headed for the next leg of my hike. As I approached the obvious arch, I found another arch, partially hidden by vegetation to the right of the trail.
I inspected this decently sized double arch for a bit,
and then moved on to the main attraction the "Arch Rock" for which this section of trail is named.
The section of trail from Arch Rock back to the trailhead was less interesting than the rest of the hike. I found a few more tarantulas,
and caught a nice glimpse of a "Balanced Rock" near that road as I returned to my car.
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