"Brunette Lady" of Joshua Tree Pictograph

 Not to be confused with the "Red Lady" of Joshua Tree pictograph. Or the "Twin Ladies" of Joshua Tree. And who knows how many others. I was hiking with my friend Mitch, and we were parked at a spot very near the location of the Brunette Lady picto. Or at least where I thought the picto was located. I had never actually seen her before, but since Mitch was also interested in seeing her, we decided to try and pay our respects before proceeding to our primary destination.

The Brunette Lady picto is located in an area that's not hard to get to. That's about all I'll say regarding the location, except that any landscape photos you see below were not taken near the picto.

Prior to our search for the Brunette Lady, Mitch took me to an arch I hadn't seen before. Well, technically it might be more of an opening in the rocks, but very interesting nonetheless.

Getting Mitch in the photo gives you perspective on the size of the rocks. Let's just hope nothing shifts while he is under there!
 

OK, let's go see if we can find the Brunette Lady!

Do you see her? She's pretty faded, but she's located in this little shallow alcove in the rocks. I'll add some color enhancement (Dstretch) so you can see her better.

Easy to see now. Human-shaped pictographs are much more rare and mysterious than the typical abstract shapes and lines we usually see. Who was this brunette lady? What was her significance? Self portrait perhaps? Time has buried the answers to these questions.

 

Here's a close-up, enhance with Dstretch. Her brunette hair really stands out. What a beautiful pictograph! There is reported to be another pictograph close to this one, but try as I might, I can't find it. After returning home, I do a little research and find that the second pictograph is literally a couple feet away from this one. Doh!! In my defense, it's very faded, and you have to be in a low position, looking up, to see it.

 

The "Twin Ladies" are extremely faded and are really only visible using Dstretch. Thanks to my friend Elliot Koeppel over at http://cali49.com/ for the use of these pics.

Mitch and I had some time to kill, so we decided to wander over to yet another rock art site I was familiar with. On the hike there, we spotted this panel that appears to have handprints on top of handprints on top of handprints. Very interesting!

Straight out of the camera photo. The pictos are still quite visible.

This site is significant because of the huge number of pictos. The large alcove is full of them. Also interesting are the multiple colors used... red, black, some white, and even some bluish pictos. Oh, and there are even some petroglyphs (above photo). A fascinating site!

 

From here, we will head over to our primary purpose for our hike. I'll save that for another post, but it turned out to be a beautiful afternoon with nice desert skies.

There's probably a technical name for these clouds, but I don't know what it is. They remind me of ocean waves.

 

Thanks for joining me on this adventure!

Stay safe and stay healthy.

Linking with Skywatch Friday.