Pullin' Chocks

Stop Over in Fallon, Nevada and a Tour of the Petroglyphs

An interesting stop over. We stayed at the local Fairgrounds. The hook ups were water and 30 Amp electric. The Sewer dump station was on the way In/Out. The dump station was an automated pay machine with two dump bays. Upon further inspection one sewer opened without payment, so we just used that one :-) It seemed like the best deal.

The park was a bit too close to the highway so we didn't get great sleep the two or three nights we stayed. We did visit the local county museum and the nearby Archaeological Area of petroglyphs and caves. We also saw a Gun Show advertised but elected to pass this time...

Free Beer, What could go wrong?

At the Archaeological Area, Grimes Point

We walked through the petroglyphs first.

Pepe coming in.

Cool visitor gazebo at the parking area, had cool simulated petroglyphs on the bench seats.

8,000 years old? Impressive. Interesting. Fascinating! Other information also told us this now desert area was once a huge inland fresh water lake, hundreds of feet deep!

This was a the single modern petroglyph found inside one of the vault toilets enclosures.... or it could just be a diagram of the germs in there!

Off we go from the parking area toward the petroglyph area. We ended up taking a hike to the top of that distant hill. The boulders just in the foreground of that hill was the petroglyph field.

Approaching the rock field and the petroglyphs...

Look, there goes one now! It looks like a snake, or maybe a river..

Many more glyphs on this large rock.

What were the ancients saying? Grog, it's a lizard! Smash it with your club! Just a guess.

Interpretive signs helped our understanding. I made the stuff about Grog up myself :-)

Our shadows at a collection of glyphs.

This marking was a little different, it was a bit more sculpture like.

Gari is in full petroglyph mode now.

We decided to walk the 2 miles up to the hilltop behind Gari in the picture above. We kind of lost the trail going up for awhile, but then got back on track.

There was a nice stone bench at the top. It was cold and windy up there, but the view was very good.

We also wanted to see the caves used by the ancient people in the same area. It is thought that the caves were used for food storage mainly. Steve went in the first cave.

Gari took pictres from a safe and wise distance.

A couple neat little holes in the cave. The low one contained in the cave the high hole leads to daylight.

Desert lichens.

Lichens.

This cave goes back over 150 feet and is only accessible by tours given once per month.

Gari on the trail.

Heading back to the truck.

The last stop in the area was the Churchill County Museum. I told the nice lady at the door that the Smithsonian didn't have anything on their displays, and meant it. Very well done curation of local American History. This shot is for Lisa, a quilt of local landmarks below.

Steve liked the grinders and examined them for awhile.

Very old Native American waterfowl decoys. Fascinating.

Steve loves arrowheads and they had an awesome collection presented in a fantastic display.

There was much more in the museum, but we just share a few more of the larger displays in the vehicle garage building. Gari by a very early model Polaris Razor ;-)