A visit to the past

Alan took us for a visit to some local petroglyphs and some grind basins. It's very hard to imagine life back in the time when these things were created.

Everything is so different now and the thought of someone bothering to leave markers for family and friends or even to stop on a regular basis to make food is very difficult to imagine. Here we are standing in 100+ degree sun and little shade... You can tell that at some point there was abundant water in the area, but it's not hard to see now why these people moved on to greener pastures.

The grind basins were pretty cool. There were several (at least 5) that I could see. I did something that will probably piss someone off - I cleaned out all of the dust and rocks and fed the dog a nice big bowl of water in one of the grind basisns. The small grind basin made a perfect water bowl... I figure that I put the past to work for me now in the present time. No damage done, but I'm sure that someone will give me shit for it.

This afternoon we're trying to stay cool. I got an insert for my evaporative cooler and as I write this I am enjoying the nice cool air blowing on me. For those that don't know what an evaporative cooler is - it's better known as a swamp cooler in most of the US. It evaporates water off of a medium and makes nice cool air (15-20 degrees cooler). It only takes 50 Watts for the fan and water pump. We can run it off of the electricity produced off just one of the 4 panels that we have and it makes the 100 degrees feel more like 75 degrees...