Day 51: Nine Mile Canyon Petroglyphs

Friday
On Thursday we packed up and moved on from Salt Lake City, having decided taht it was a very interesting place and we had enjoyed our time there. we have moved South East over the Wastach Mts to an area called the Castle Country, kind of nowhere in particular, but surrounded by the cliffs and buttes we expect from Utah, but mostly beige and brown rather than the usual red. Big coal mining area, with lots of oil and gas recovery as well. It is just over a mountain range to the south of Salvation Lake, if we had not of detoured to SLC we would have passed this way a week ago.
We are staying in the RV section of a motel, the motel is nice, the RV bit is pretty ugly, but there is an indoor pool which is OK.
We chose this RV Park to be close to Nine Mile Canyon, which is a local Scenic Back Road, these are usually pretty or important roads that are undeveloped (i.e. gravel surface). Nine Mile Canyon Road is important for a number of reasons. It was part the first communication link in this area, being a stagecoach route, it also was used by the Fremont People of around 950 - 1200 A.D. and there are many thousands of petroglyphs on the rocks of the canyon.
We were pleased to find that in the last two years BLM had found resources to make this road more accessible and have paved the entire route, in total about 70 miles of canyon which is quite impressive as it now means that we can drive the 40 miles to where the main petroglyphs are. We wouldn't normally consider 40 miles of gravel road as though they are often quite good they are still very uncomfortable to ride on for any length of time.
We took our packed lunch and set off, after abut 10 miles we could see a cliff wall and found that the road passed through a gap into the canyon. We followed the road and found several ancient sites with their pictographs, which although they inspired awe in their longevity, being perhaps 1000 years old, were not of the most artistically profound, being mostly shapes of sheep and people chasing sheep, with a few wavy lines and circles (not sure if they were from the same school of art).
We really enjoyed the massive scenery that Utah excels in, driving the canyon with its massive cliff walls, also the weather was again perfect, so we were able to relax in the sun at every stop along the way. At one place we overtook a real cowboy, rounding up real cows on a real horse with his dogs, followed by his wife(?) in the pickup with a trailer to collect the cattle with, we saw them a little later as they led the cattle into a corral so that they could be more easily loaded onto the pickup, very interesting. We also watched ,what we think is, a Golden Eagle which Sally spotted soaring up one of the cliff faces - there is a pic on the album.
At the far end of the road (for us, it goes on further) was a place where there was evidence of a Fremont Village, which we found, and also one of the most famous of the Fremont petroglyphs, called The Hunting Panel, depicting a hunt for Big Horn Sheep. We found it and it was well displayed and accessible. It was indeed the most interesting of the petroglyphs we saw, very clear considering it was a 1000 years old. This left us with a pleasant drive back to the trailer.
Always slightly cynical, we did notice that there was an awful lot of oil and gas industry in this canyon, with well heads every few miles and tankers coming past perhaps every ten to fifteen minutes, so I wondered if the paving of the road was more to do with boosting USA's energy resource recovery than access for tourists to the petroglyphs, which would probably be better protected by being inaccessible. Hmmm......
Still another enjoyable day in the Utah Back Country. Tomorrow we move on to Green River.