Missoula to Parowon, Utah, Oct 17, 18

   Oct 17. Missoula to Pocatello.

   We left David and Maura, happy for their happiness, but sad to say goodbye to them. Maura had to go to work, but David had another day off.
    We drove about 5 1/2 hours to Pocatello, Idaho via I-90 and I-15. The day got warmer and sunnier and we stopped for a short hike off I-15 at Hell's Half Acre, a place where lava pushed up out of the ground long, long ago. It was nice to stretch our legs and to see juniper and sage and the crevasses of lava. We stayed at La Quinta and got some grocery store food for dinner.

Oct 18  Pocatello to Parowon

      We left Pocatello early and drove I-15, passing by the huge sprawl that is now Salt Lake City. The scenery changed as we drove, getting flatter and drier. We could see massive mountains in the distance. We only drive about 5 1/2 hours again. We had hoped to stay in St. George, but it was very booked, so we are about an hour north in a small town. (under 3,000 people.) But, it turned out to be a gem. We are at a little motel (Mountain View) run by a Chinese family. We ate lunch at Hamburger Patty's.

     Then, we set off to find the Parowan Gap, a gap about 10 miles out of town originally formed by an ancient river. First we stopped to see remains of dinosaurs. The dinosaur footprints were not overwhelming, but the scenery was. The dinosaurs were three-toed hadrosaurs and rather common in N. America. The footprints are now in the large chunks of sandstone boulders.
   We went a bit further through the Gap to a site of a huge gallery of ancient American petroglyphs. There are estimated to be 15,000 of them left over 1000s of years by Native Americans most part of what are now called the Fremont people, as they traversed the Gap to the Red Hills on yearly migrations. The most famous and complex glyph represents a lunar and solar calendar. It is too complicated to write about here but is very impressive. No wonder the site is sacred to Native Americans