Painted Rocks

March 30th, 2025

My travels toward the east started on Tuesday the 25th. It was only a 2 hour drive to reach Painted Rocks Indian Petroglyphs Campground. The 60 sites are laid out in loops near a pile of volcanic rock in the desert just northwest of Gila Bend, Arizona.

Set on the Gila River plain, the rock pile has been used by passing Native Americans to create images from their lives and imaginations scratched into the rocks and boulders. The surrounding landscape is typical of the Sonoran Desert. The campground has about 60 sites for RVs and tents. When I first arrived there were 5 other occupied campsites, but by Thursday, I was the only one left. The campground was far enough north of Interstate 8, that you could hear no road noise. This was one of the most quiet places I have ever camped. Some days, you would hear the blowing wind. But especially at night, the silence was complete. Sometimes all you could hear was the pulse of blood in your ears. For the third year I found my spring travels starting with a stay in total isolation and quiet, first the grasslands near Rawlings, Wyoming, then Flaming Gorge Reservoir, and now Painted Rocks.

On the third day, I drove into Gila Bend for groceries. Mostly I needed drinking water. Camping in the desert invites thirst, and with the first 3 days of 95 degree afternoon temperatures, I was going through water like a camel at an oasis.

The difficulty with spring travel, is trying to escape the growing heat of the desert, while not moving fast enough to arrive where temperatures can still drop below freezing at night. You start out moving slowly, loitering at places longer than you would like, in order not to move faster than the season changes. For a while, I will remain in the desert, before turning north along the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains.

Many of the campgrounds at which I stay will be around and among piles of picturesque rocks and slabs jutting up out of the desert and grasslands. It could be like a traveling geology lesson, were I to have much interest in the why and how of that. But, I am content to just be here and soak up the scenic landscape, taking a few photos here and there when a layout, contrast or format trips my mind. It is odd how something you may have never seen or imagined before, whispers in your mind that “this is a good photo”. I snap the photograph to add to so many others, realizing that I will most likely never look at it again. I snap the picture anyway, out of habit. It is not like the old days, where you were paying for film and processing and photo albums for storage. I pay pennies a month for Apple or Microsoft to store as many photos as I want.

I remember when I was a kid, going through boxes and albums of old black and white photos of my parents and extended family. Now that is all changed. Maybe our children will someday look through our images on thumb drives, or external hard drives, or perhaps cloud storage and wonder about where we went and what we did. Of course, they may need to know our passwords or encryption codes to retrieve those images (hint: my code is 4 digits, my Rockford, Illinois Boys Club Membership ID from when I was 11 years old).

I am staying here in the quiet, at Painted Rocks for another few days. Then I will again drive east, following Interstate 8 until it merges into I-10. I will dip past Tucson and stop at the Pima Air and Space Museum. I have always been interested in old airplanes and jets. Then I will move on to a couple more piles of rock, some shaped like loaves of bread, and others standing like a tiny city.

Here at this place, native Americans stopped. They were hunters and gatherers. Their life in this desert was harsh. But they did have time. Time to rest and time to scratch and scrape images into the rock. Images of nature, their lives, and their dreams. In the evenings, they sat around a campfire with their friends and loved ones. There was no Facebook and no Instagram or X. They sat and told stories about their day, smiled and laughed. And they were happy.