Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Memorial Day? Must Mean Mud! Day #1

Dad at the balancing Pig Head Rock! Can you see the eyes and nose?? We found a geocache here.Memorial Day Weekend last year included a muddy geocaching adventure to Yuba Lake with plenty of puddles, mud-caked hiking shoes and globs of mud that were still falling off from under the car through the winter. This year we picked Nine Mile Canyon east of Price (where we stayed Friday night.) It was misting, drizzling and downright down pouring, on and off, throughout the day. We never saw a patch of blue sky, but we still had a great time. Nine Mile Canyon has supposedly the largest concentration of petroglyphs in the nation. We downloaded about 50 waypoints from the internet to guide us on our tour of the canyon which ended up being about 100 miles and 8+ hours long. We saw lots of very interesting Fremont Indian rock art, ancient granaries and watch towers, ghost towns and ranches. The unpaved backcountry road was sometimes gravel, sometimes washboards and sometimes just plain mud! But it wasn’t crowded or dusty!! The canyon was probably a lusher green than any other time of year and the moisture enhanced the colors.

Big desert varnish rock

Tiny orange flowers

First panel of petroglyphs...we ate our picnic lunch here (in the car) and waited till the rain slowed down.

Canyon wall of squared-off rocks in the Book Cliffs between the Price River drainage area and the Uintah Basin.

Old ghost town building

Dad and Petros

Part of a 100-yard-long panel of petroglyphs

Ridgeline in Cottonwood Canyon

It was "raining mud!" Mud was actually flipping up from our own tires and raining down on the windshield.
The CRV is stating to get a mud coating...it got a LOT worse.

Mom at The Great Hunt Panel

Beautiful red flowers...a variety of Indian Paintbrush

A look into the back seat. Do you see anything out of place? Yep, we didn't realize at first that Dad had grabbed a sofa headrest cover along with his jacket.

2 comments:

Airie said...

Did Dad freak out when he saw the couch thing in the car? hehehe :) Classic.

Autumn said...

What a cool place! I can't really see the pig head...but I'm sure it's there. Nile Mile Canyon looks a lot like Capitol Reef country...the petroglyphs are very cool. Looks like you had a good time ;) Mud is always an adventure.