This is an easy adventure to an amazing petroglyph panel and also a mine!  The petroglyph panel overlooks I-70 and just think how many people drive by and don’t even notice it.  I didn’t!

The Tree of Life petroglyph panel is so named because of a carving that appears to be a tree with roots with a half circle surrounding just the upper portion of the glyph.  It’s not certain if this is actually a depiction of a tree, but it’s still neat to think about.

You begin by parking off the side of I-70.  I can’t stress enough how important it is to pull off to the side of the road as far as you can.  It would be easy for you to pull over and your pet dog or kid to jump out of the car and run into traffic going 80+ MPH!  Just pull over and be self aware of everyone with you.  You also are pretty close to a blind curve, so when you get back into your vehicle, make sure you can speed up fast enough without causing a traffic accident.

Once you park, the glyph is on your right side on the cliffs.  You will need to cross over a BLM fence – I found a place where I could slide under without breaking my back and hiked up to the panel.

You will need to do some very minor rock scrambling in order to get close to the petroglyphs.  Technically, you wouldn’t even need to leave your car to see these, if you had binoculars.  In addition to the Tree of Life glyph, you will see some zigzags, anthropomorphs (human-like figures), desert big horn sheep, and other shapes.  You can see the tick marks on the right side of the panel.  I’ve seen those before.  In some places, those are solar markings that could relate to solstice and other events.

Around the corner there appear to be remnants of a granary or some type of small structure.

Around the other corner is the mine. It goes in about 50 or so feet and is neat to see.  It’s kind of a steep climb if you approach it the way I did, so I wouldn’t recommend this for everyone.  This was most likely an area where miners thought uranium was in the ground.  They obviously didn’t find much since the mine deadened real fast.

I explored more in the immediate area and found a natural arch and a dead fox 🙁

There is also a very short mine (more like a prospect) nearby.  You can check my GPS coordinates for the mines and petroglyphs.  The GPS coordinate for “mine 2” is an approximate location since I had already turned off my GPS when I found it.