My long awaited vacation started last week as my son and I headed out from Orange County, CA to Denver, CO for my father-in-law's 80th birthday party. We left on Wednesday after his last final exam and drove to Cedar City, UT. The next day, we headed to Canyonlands National park to check off one of my bucket list items - the White Rim Trail. Before reaching Canyonlands though I had heard of a couple of popular petroglyphs that I wanted to see: Head of Sinbad and Black Dragon. The petroglyphs in this area of Utah are supposedly some of the only native drawings of extraterrestrial and prehistoric life as the pictures look definitely alien like and the dragon looks like a pterodactyl.
The road to the Head of Sinbad is off of I-70 and was pretty well marked with signs.
We came upon a reddish-brown pond called "State Pond" on the map. This was the last time our mtn bikes would be clean. I knew they were going to get dirty and dusty but I didn't want them on the roof since I couldn't see them and I wanted to minimize the wind resistance and noise.
The Head of Sinbad is within Locomotive Rock (shown below). There were a few different trails to select from and no signs and we ended up finding some other petroglyphs that were partially destroyed from weather. I had a picture of the Head of Sinbad from a hiking book so I knew these weren't it but it was still a shame to see art destroyed.
We backtracked and ended up finding the actual drawings of the Head of Sinbad. The ink was much darker than the previous ones. The drawings were about 10-15 feet high and appeared very alien-like.
This is the Head of Sinbad.
After that we headed back to the I-70 and found some cows along with some fairly large sections of water on the trail left over from the last rain. Unfortunately we had to stick to the muddy road and our mtn bikes got a helpful serving of fresh Utah mud.
The exit to Black Dragon Wash is just after passing the huge "ship" rock at Mile Marker 147.
This is the entrance of Black Dragon Wash.
The infamous pterodactyl-like dragon petroglyph. This and other drawings are about 70 feet up the wall so a zoom lens is very beneficial unless you like to climb on loose shale.
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