Vermilion Cliffs: Very old structures and possibly ancient ruins

Because of the winds we had to leave our Grand Canyon camping spot.   The weather forecast was for two more days of strong winds (and we subsequently found the forecast to be accurate)  We had enough food and water for a 5-day trip, and had driven about 300 miles to get here.  So we decided to invent a new way of camping.

We are calling it Mamping.  Motel-camping.  We had passed some interesting looking motels/lodges/inns in the area, so drove to one called Cliff Dwellers.  We got a room, for about 2/3 of what we had expected to pay.  And it was a great room. Had a porch in front of our room where we could cook our food on our Coleman Stove (which is a requirement in order to call what we are doing Mamping).

The room itself was all done in old pine, not the new stuff that you can get now.  It was beautiful, with updated features, a good shower, and a quiet, and obviously new, air conditioner.

The next day we hiked in the Vermilion Cliffs National Monument.  We just drove along the road until we saw a gate, and started hiking toward the cliffs, not going anywhere in particular.

Until we saw a bright green area.  We knew, from experience, that this meant there was a natural spring there.  And where there is a natural spring there is often other interesting features.  So we headed there.



And we were right.

There were remnants of a very old fence and a watering trough that was unlike any we had ever seen.  It was very old.






It was made of wood.  Usually when we find these they are rusted metal or made of stone and buried.  We had no way of dating the wood, but it was clearly hand-hewn.

On our way back to the Rat we followed a wash until we hit a dry fall.  We had to get out of the wash to get around it.  When we looked from the top into the small canyon we saw what we believe now to be quite possibly ancient ruins.  There were several walls made of rock.  They could serve no purpose we could discern because they weren't in areas where settlers might have created them to hold water.  

We plan on contacting the Bureau of Land Management and seeing whether these are, in fact, ancient ruins.  They are all over this area so this is a very likely possibility.  If so, it is quite exciting to just discover them on our own.