Painted Hand Ruins

We went over to SE Utah yesterday in search of the Painted Hand Ancient Pueblan ruins. After we missed the turn once, we turned around and found the rough rocky road. After about a half mile we found the parking lot and the 1/4 mile trail through sage, piñon and juniper and down some precarious places over the canyon rim we disccovered a tower and a few remaining walls. The ruins were certainly not as lage and magnificent as Mesa Verde, but never-the-less we were visiting a place where folks lived a thousad or so years ago and it always demands a sort of reverence. Here are a few pics of the adventure. As you see, I didn’t make it to the bottom as the trail became too precarious and I wasn’t fully prepared, not expecting the difficuty. So, be safe rather than sorry. I didn’t want to have to call Search and Rescue to haul me out with a broken leg. Already did that once and that was enough.

The beginning of the trail to the ruins.
Looks like a wall under the flat rock. How did anyone get there? And why?
Another partial wall.
This appears to be a collapsed round tower.
A collapsed tower.
A fairly intact tower.
Another view of the intact tower.
This looking west. The vastness of the Great Sage Plain that once stretched from NW New Mexico up into Utah , west and beyond. A lot of the Colorado area is now dryland farming.

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