Day-After-Black-Friday Getaway

The is one of two connected blog posts. The first post actually follows this one, if you're a chronological kind of person.

Randy and I spent Black Friday exploring coal-mining ghost towns near Helper, Utah, on Friday. On Saturday we headed up Nine Mile Canyon, which is 45 miles long, beginning at Wellington, Utah. I've been here once before, and you can see my blog from that trip here.
Nine Mile Canyon has a lot of interesting rock formations, old cabins and ranches, and other scenery, as well as more petroglyphs than anywhere else in North America. There are about 1,000 sites with more than 10,000 individual depictions. The petroglyphs were left primarily by the Fremont Indians about 1,000 years ago. Archeologists also think Ute Indians left their art on the walls as late as the 1800s.

This is Hog's Head Rock or Balanced Rock. Take your pick. I couldn't get it to tip over.

I'm not doing these pictures in order, so don't try to follow them on the actual road. This is the remains of a Fremont village, which is up a pretty steep but short hike from the road near the end of Nine Mile Canyon.

There was also supposed to be a picture of a buffalo and a big hunt somewhere around here. We hiked all over this mountain looking for them.

This is the valley looking southwest (I think) from the Fremont village.

This grain mill is under a protected rock overhang near the Fremont village remains. These indentations look like footprints, but if they were footprints, someone would have had to dance in place many, many hours with stone shoes to grind these pockets into this rock.

We finally found The Great Hunt mural farther down the road. This picture is famous. Archeologists think this depicts a mountain goat hunt in November or December, the only time of year the male, female, and young goats would all be in one place at the same time. There are three hunters with bows and arrows.

Here's one of the great archeologists at The Great Hunt mural, also called the Cottonwood Panel.

This is the big buffalo we were looking for. It turned out to be on the other side of the road between the Fremont village and The Great Hunt mural.

These rows of dots are a repeating pattern throughout the canyon. Since we didn't have anyone to explain what each of these petroglyphs means, I will make up my own meanings and explain them to you. These dots are rows of corn ready for harvest as seen from an airplane or the space shuttle.

This is Pancho Villa. He wasn't around 1,000 years ago, I don't think, but all these pictures aren't that old. Some are from the 1800s, 1900s, and 2000s.

These mountain goats and the coil are Fremont etchings. I'm guessing William Carroll of Vernal left his mark more recently, say 1888.

This is the turkey that the U.S. president pardoned. He showed his thanks by eating two horses, a hunter with funny hair, and a gazelle. The dove on the left is a recent addition.

This is a mountain goat with a very big mouth. He's ready to eat the turkey that ate the two horses, the hunter with the funny hair, and the gazelle. Or he just got his nosed pierced.

Randy bought this 2002 Olympic torch on eBay for $1,200 recently. Did you say, "Why?" I don't know. But we found a 1,000-year-old Fremont petroglyph that is very close in design. Randy may look a bit frightened, but consider he's pretty high up a rock wall, standing on a narrow ledge. The artist fell off the ledge just before he etched the bottom two Olympic rings.

The scorpion on the left threw a lasso around a reindeer on Christmas eve and ruined the holiday for the Fremonts that year.

This is a rattle snake coiled and ready to strike.

This famous salamander with fireworks shooting out of his brains was great entertainment during the summer festival.

It wasn't uncommon for Martians to visit the Fremonts to swap stories about how experiments on their visitors turned out.

Paul McCartney is actually much older than previously believed. This is a depiction of the guitar he used when he entertained the Fremonts in 1064.

The dirt road up Nine Mile Canyon is very well maintained, because there is a lot of natural gas drilling in these mountains, and this road services them along with this natural gas compression plant.