Getting the flavor of...Utah’s 6,000-year-old museum

Utah’s 6,000-year-old museum

Deep in a forbidding Utah canyon hangs a collection of powerful, ancient art, said David Kelly in the Los Angeles Times. Last year, my children and I were looking for adventure, so we four-wheeled and hiked into Canyonlands National Park and Horseshoe Canyon, home of numerous “enigmatic” pictographs created by unknown artists more than 6,000 years ago. No one knows the meaning of these wall paintings, but they’re attributed to the pre-Anasazi race called the Archaic people. My son spotted the first pictograph series, set high on a canyon wall. The images were unusual—some insect-like, others human. We crossed a creek to get a close-up look at colorfully painted bison heads, and soon “the pictographs were popping up everywhere.” The unusual art show culminated with a 200-foot-long wall covered with painted figures, many with “haunted, hollow eyes.” It was a spiritual experience, “in the way only a wonderful mystery can be.”

California’s Mendocino County

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Mendocino County is a charming wine country free of the tourist hordes that can spoil Napa Valley, said Jeff Heilman in the New York Daily News. The drive north from the Bay Area stretches a bit longer, but the trip is “worth every exhilarating curve on the Pacific Coast Highway.” True wine lovers may want to approach from the inland side, through Mendocino’s Anderson Valley. “A patchwork of vineyards, orchards, and sheep-dotted hills sweeping up to forested ridges,” the valley abounds in wineries that offer free daily tastings. But Mendocino isn’t all about wine. Out on the coast, historic Mendocino Village sits on a highland, offering an “artful, unfussy time capsule” of Victorian architecture, plus the chance to watch for migrating whales from one of its charming inns. Still, my moment of true rapture came while driving through Navarro River Redwoods State Park. “This 11-mile redwood tunnel to the sea is as moving as a cathedral.”