February 17 -- Back To Little Finland

I just can't get enough of the place...But I was supposed to go somewhere else instead. It had been arranged the day before to meet up with Douglas and Kay, two Canadians traveling from Alaska to Mexico in their Lance camper, so together we could hike to what's been called Nevada's largest petroglyph panel. I'd given him the GPS coordinates to the site as I don't have a GPS device,  so he knew how to get there, and I didn't.  I drove out to Gold Butte from Overton, passed by the camper I thought was theirs...and it belonged to someone else. So I tried calling them on my cell; I got a call back, but it didn't go through, so I left 3 messages with no response. Then while at Little Finland I got a voice message at 2:55pm -- it was from Kay, and she'd left it at 8:50am!  I was just now receiving it; cellphone service is spotty at best out there, even if you're just a few miles away from one another. So instead of the hike to the petroglyph panel, I decided to return to Little Finland. When I'd gone there with my friends James Hager and OP a few weeks back, I thought I'd never be able to find it on my own, but it was fairly easy. Along the route is "Devil's Throat", a huge sinkhole at least 200 feet deep --

After Devil's Throat, the route lies mostly in a wash, lined in spots with sandstone -- and watch the walls, there are petroglyphs everywhere here -- 

The "road" winds along in the wash, until the "battlements" of Little Finland lies in front of you --

It really DOES look like a fortress, or a huge spaceship made of sandstone --

Here's a view from atop Little Finland, looking west --

The scenery once on "top" of Little Finland is incredible. Buttresses, spires, fins, hobgoblins, spirals -- you name it, Little Finland has it --

It even has a water source, either from a seep or spring, with salt-tolerant grasses and plants growing --

This could be the appendage from some giant spaceship -- or whatever your imagination can conjure up --

The head of a grinning dragon? Or a pig? What do YOU see? --

There are many "peepholes" at Little Finland, too. Here's one of the more fanciful ones, looking almost as if the opening leads to another world --

The rock here is brittle in parts; here it almost looks like "nature's sculpting studio", with the scattered shards of rock like discarded material --

But for me the most fanciful and whimsical of the rock formations at Little Finland are the ones with holes, looking like a fantasy "condominium", or certainly multi-unit dwelling of some kind --

Here's another --

Every time I visit a place like this I wish I knew more about geology, and understand the forces that created such unreal beauty --

There are petroglyphs at Little Finland, too, somewhat unusual in that they are on rock lying almost parallel with the ground --

Lizards, desert bighorn sheep, the sun -- and tic-tac-toe? 

Salt looks like a light dusting of snow --

Then sunset arrives, giving Little Finland and the surrounding landscape and different hue --

 The sunset  lights up the clouds --

And the day ends with a spectacular bang --

Another memorable day -- followed by a wild, 4-wheel-drive back along the wash, with the occasional "now where did that road go?" -- at Little Finland.