Our trip to Nine Mile Canyon

I just spent a weekend in Nine Mile Canyon down by Price, UT, looking for petroglyphs.  Once we got the hang of it they weren't hard to find!  We drove and drove, craning our necks, scanning to find the ancient graffiti and suddenly came upon a balancing rock.  It looked pretty precarious and rather impressive.

So we took some photos of it.  And then Ken showed me a picture of a little petroglyph he spotted while shooting the rock and we were on our way!

Can you see the little dude?  He's pretty square.

Here's a zoomed in shot (they aren't super easy to see as you drive by...sometimes)

So we got out of the car, all excited, and went down the little ditch and up the other side and began a short ascent to see this little dude and off to our right, there was a mother lode, tucked back where it couldn't be seen from the road!

Here's Ken, who gets credit for the first find of the trip!

I was so excited to make contact with history!  Still makes me smile to think that in a way I made a connection with a Fremont person who also touched this stone and, unlike me, left a more permanent mark of the event.

After the first find we started to develop an instinct for where they might be found.  But the carvers played with our minds on a regular basis.  You'd see panels that looked ideal for art, stare and stare and nothing.  Nada!  Often we'd have to just stare a while to see them.  Sometimes it was luck.  You'd climb up to something you'd seen and find a bunch more tucked here and there in the area.  We learned to look around carefully before climbing back down.  There was often much more there than you could see doing a drive by.

We noticed a number of things while we were searching for art.  They usually liked broad, smooth panels with contrasting surfaces.  Not always tho.  Always exceptions to the rule.  You'd climb up to some panels and then find a little deer or something carved into some rough rock, a narrow edge, at an angle.

Ken said there was oil shale all over the place (which explains the mining that was going on carefully in certain areas of the region).  Sometimes when you'd look up you'd see a glob of black stuff that appeared to be oozing out from between rocks.  It wasn't moving or anything so anything it was doing was a slow process.  Some rock had black stuff creeping down across the surface.  Later on, some of the rocks looked almost burned.  I think the black tarry material might have finally fused to the lighter stone underneath.  Here is a good example of that...

These images were chiseled in, maybe a 1/4"...someone worked very hard to chip them into the rock

Most were on lighter surfaces than the one shown above, like the first hidden ones we saw, but many were on rocks that almost appeared stained or burned.

It rained off and on while we were there and I have to say that it is one of the best smelling places on earth that I've been so far.  Especially after a fresh rain!  There are wild sage and pine all over the place.  The air is a fresh, sweet, spicy combination of those scents with mustard and little flowers mixed in here and there.  I enjoyed just breathing there!  I wish they could bottle that scent so I could take it home with me!  One of the other places that has a remarkable scent, in my opinion, is a redwood forest.  You can tell when a redwood is near.  But that's another story.  Anyway, if you ever go there you'll know what I mean about how great it smells.

Snakes and spirals featured very often in the Fremont (or Ute?) art.  The art below shows a spiral turning into a snake.  We figured there could be a few reasons for this.  When taken in context by looking at the area around you, you see that the water source, stream, curls and wends around like a snake.  Maybe the river seemed snakelike to them?  Plus there are many snake types in the area, including a rattler which likes to coil up and sun.  It seemed important to them.  Many pieces seemed to have snakes in them and often spanning large portions of the carvings.

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We learned that the Fremont left the area around 1200 AD.  Not sure when the Ute came in but horses were introduced in the late 1600's.  So all the horse carvings came from the Ute.

We found hundreds of carvings once we got an eye for it!  When we were finally tired and heading home, I'd look out the window and see one here and there...just like they were saying bye!  On the way home we passed under a bridge with some rusted areas on it.  I caught myself squinting at it, half expecting to find a little carved figure looking back at me.  I admitted as much to Ken and he laughed because he noticed he'd done the same thing!

Some things I learned about Ken.  Some I knew but were reinforced.  First of all, and this was a bit humbling, in spite of Ken having really bad knees he usually would beat me during the climbs and be sitting at the top, watching and waiting for me to arrive.

One climb I was determined to beat him to the top so found a different route that required a little more climbing and beat him!  I was gasping and panting but dammit I beat him!  And then on the way down, I followed the same route and managed to have a short fall and scraped up my elbow and legs.  Stung for a little bit!  After that I stopped being competitive with him.  I learned.

my elbow...yup I bled for those petroglyphs

What was reinforced and highlighted was Ken's stubbornness.  On day 2, when his knees were already sore from the previous day's exertions, we came upon some glyphs that were a substantial climb over rocks and on loose shale/soil.  I was ready to take pictures and move on but he announced he was going to climb it.  I argued that we should take zoomed pictures and then see what we had when we got home later.  He said he was going to climb.  I said it was too dangerous.  He said, OK, I'm going to climb it.  So I pocketed my little camera and started after him.  He was surprised I was joining him but there was no way I was sitting at the bottom while he went up to see everything!  Once again, he was sitting there, waiting for my gasping panting self.  Bleah.  But the carvings were fantastic!

here are some of the carvings we saw...there were many more along a whole wall of panels

here is a view of the car from the top of that particular climb - there were a few like this before we were finished

One other thing I learned about Ken is that when he is interested in something, very little gets in his way.  I think Ken wanted to see every possible petroglyph that could be accessed from the road.  I'd say how we'd seen plenty, let's move on and find the ruins and he would still drive to each potential panel and do a quick study before moving on and if there was something remotely accessible, we were going.  We only hiked in once at Daddy Canyon and managed not to find anything except pretty scenery for our troubles.  Ken built some cairns as symbols of our having been there.  Did that in Canyonlands too.  I like that!

  

We saw some cool old ruined buildings.  There were free range cattle in some of them and they got very upset with us for stopping to take pictures.  Cow mooing carries loudly in canyons!  They kept it up until we were out of sight.  Sorry we offended you cows!

Ken is in the next room right now watching sports.  I want to get this down while it's fresh in my head.  In the span of 2 days we experienced a lot.  We came across a doe grazing near the road and stopped to take a photo.  She saw us watching her and then surprised us by coming a bit closer for a look at us!  She was pretty beautiful!  The carvings show a lot of deer, bison, elk, etc. but they weren't apparent to us while we were traveling thru.  We did see a lot of cattle but not a lot else.  Well, we did see some speedy little lizards zooming around on the rocks.

she came in for a closer look

little brown lizard climbing vertical

We saw gorgeous scenery!!

We climbed to an ancient Fremont village site.  Wasn't much village to see.  Some rocks in circles. Considering how old the site is it was still pretty remarkable. According to the literature we had on them, they would dig partially into the soil and use lumber for roofing.  The village was strategically placed on an outlook with the river running below and mountain to the back.  They had a fantastic view of the valley around them.

a rock wall along one side of the structure

Rocks in a circle - middle would have been dug out, with stone benches along outer walls and topped with lumber roof.  Looking out over the valley, the green in the background.

Visiting this place was a moving experience for me.  I LOVE looking for the ghosts of the past!  In this place I got to touch some of them and felt a connection to that long ago time.  Ken loves this too.  He thought he would have enjoyed being an archaeologist.  I can see him loving that!  The office space is gorgeous!  I was calling him my "pocket geologist".  When he didn't know something he just made up some outrageous crap and made me laugh.  

We spent hours "off the grid" as there was no phone signals in there.  Since Ken works all the time it was nice to have him all to myself!

We work well as a team.  We watch out for each other and have flexible attitudes when things don't go our way.  Like when we couldn't find the granaries or some of the artwork touted in the info we had on the area. We only got a little grumpy for a little while.  Then we'd find something else to get excited about.  I trust him to save me if I got hurt.  I told him we should bring a dolly in with us next time so I can save him if he gets hurt!  

For my earlier comments/complaints, I'll admit we take turns being stubborn and the other is a good sport about going along with it until we hit mutual agreement that enough is enough.  Like our futile trek into Daddy canyon that still served up some beautiful scenery when we weren't feeling oppressed by the heat and lack of breezes and artwork.  (We picked a bad route I guess)  We got as far in as we did because we kept taking turns saying, let's just go around that curve and see what's up there, then we'll head back.  And then grumbling because we hadn't brought water in.  We'd been hiking about 10 minutes already for cripes sake!

We came out of the canyon tired, a bit scraped/scuffed, dirty/gritty, sunburned, thirsty and I had caveman hair from driving with the windows open and no ponytail.  Oh well!  It now rates as yet another of my favorite trips and a place I'll be happy to return to again!