The drive from the House on Fire trailhead at Bears Ears to the Needles District of Canyonlands was supposed to take a little over an hour… well, we kinda doubled that because I went the wrong way for a little (big) bit of it. Whoops.

We finally headed the right direction through the Manti Sal National Forest, drove through some snow and saw more deer butts. We found this cool overlook of the entire Needles area with binoculars labelled and arranged for you to see some of the mountains and different sites – Lasal Mountains, Dead Horse Point, Shay Mountains, etc.

We didn’t spend much time there since it was pretty muddy from snow melt, and it was only about 20 minutes later that we came up on the parking lot for Newspaper Rock.

There’s also a “newspaper rock” in Petrified Forest that I’ve posted about, but this is THE “newspaper rock” I think about when I hear the name.

“Newspaper Rock is a petroglyph panel etched in sandstone that records approximately 2000 years of early human actvity. Pre-historic peoples, probably from the Archaic, Basketmaker, Fremont, and Pueblo cultures, etched on the rock from B.C. time to A.D. 1300. In historic times, Ute and Navajo people, as well as European Americans made their contribution.

“In interpreting the figures on the rock, scholars are undecided as to their meaning or have yet to decipher them. In Navajo, the rock is called ‘Te’ Hane’ (Rock that tells a story.)

“Unfortunately, we do not know if the figures represent storytelling, doodling, hunting magic, clan symbols, ancient graffiti, or something else. Without a true understanding of the petroglyphs, much is left for individual interpretation.”

We spent forever just taking in all of the intricate details, guessing what stories they may have been telling, laughing because some of these drawings are definitely of aliens, and comparing them to the petroglyphs we’d seen over the past few days.

Who’s Mr. Alien Sword Man?

The big bull man above the big circular wheel also interested me endlessly.

We spent so much time here that we almost missed the Needles Visitor Center being open and getting our Passport stamp! We didn’t go in the visitor center because they were locking up, but the Ranger was nice enough to take pity on us, go inside, and stamp our Passport herself. Hallelujah.

After we were done putzing around in the Needles district of Canyonlands, we visited Newspaper Rock again (there’s only one way in and out) – and had it alllll to ourselves. So good. We would have stayed even longer just staring at it but we started racing sunset and still had a little over an hour ’til reaching our digs for the night in Moab.

Such a good day.

More about the Manti-La Sal National Forest:
https://www.fs.usda.gov/r04/manti-lasal

Newspaper Rock via the Bureau of Land Management:
https://www.blm.gov/visit/newspaper-rock

Newspaper Rock via Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_Rock_State_Historic_Monument

More about the Needles District of Canyonlands via the National Park Service:
https://www.nps.gov/cany/planyourvisit/needles.htm