Celebrating Dad Earl's 100th birthday at Gold Butte National Monument and Whitney Pockets

Dad Earl would have been 100 years old in January and 
Dad Branch would have been 95 years old in January. 
This isn't meant to be a commentary on our ages haha. 

Amazing!

We thought it would be fun to celebrate Grant's 100th birthday 
with all the Earl siblings!

Marti and Chuck were wintering in St. George

and Scott and April knew of some neat places in the Mojave Desert

so we all drove south for a birthday celebration.

(Sadly, Steve and Carol weren't able to make it - we missed you guys!)

We stayed in St. George with Marti and Chuck for church on Sunday.

This was the view from their trailer park. <3

Then we picked up 4-wheelers 

and headed to Gold Butte National Monument

where they watch out for their tortoises.

We could see Lake Mead in the distance.

Scott and April led us to this beautiful campsite at Whitney Pockets.

Then the celebration began with 4-wheeling!

Scott and April took us to Little Finland

known for intricately eroded rock fins

and white salt deposits that looked like new fallen snow.

Naturally occurring palm trees were growing along the base of the cliff

where springs were watering more than palm trees and lizards - like the little wild burro

that left these tracks Scott and April noticed!

We drank in the sunset

as we ate dinner and shared memories of dear parents.

The evening of Dad's birthday, Marti lit a candle in a fruit bread while we sang happy birthday with feelings of gratitude for such very good parents.

Happy Birthday Dad!

The next morning we rode to the tailhead of the

falling man petroglyph rock art panel.

Scott and April had put all the waypoints in their GPS 

and that was a game changer.

We'd have never found so many petroglyphs on our own.

Falling man was a little scramble up to a hole in a rock wall.

(Loved the "tree of life" petroglyph next to the hole.)

We crawled through the hole and came out the back side

to find the "falling man petroglyph".

Such a pretty place!

That afternoon we explored historical remains 

of a CCC irrigation dam project from the 1930-40's.

(picture from birdandhike.com)

Washington County Historical Society has this terrific aerial - sooo interesting to see the dam (top center of the photo) and other features from above!

The dam was half of the way into this slot canyon/drainage.

One set of stairs went up the right side of the dam

and another set of stairs went down the back into the reservoir area. 

We could continue into the reservoir area as it was dry that day, 

to a second layer of dams that the guys believed was built to retain sediment. There was a geocaching virtual cache letter/symbol stamped on the rod that thanks to Scott's detective work and persistence we were able to find and log. 

It was such an interesting place 

way out in the middle of that beautiful dessert!

Thanks for the wonderful time sibs and happy birthday Dads!!!