Horse Canyon Road BLM Dispersed Campsite.

My latest ear-worm:

Paladin, Paladin, where do you roam?

Paladin, Paladin, far, far from home

Have gun will travel reads the card of a man

A knight without armor, in a savage land

His fast gun for hire, heeds the calling wind

A soldier of fortune, is the man called, Paladin

—Ballad of Paladin, Have Gun Will Travel TV show (1957-63)

My ear worm woke me up at 5 am. I quickly made up my mind to abandon Moab and move on. Wanda wholeheartedly agreed. I drained the grey water into the portable tank, filled the fresh water tank, and secured the outside.

While Wanda got the inside ready, I made a quick dash into town to exchange an empty LP tank and completely fill up our spare fresh water containers.

We were hitched and pulling out of our campsite by 8 am, singing the Ballad of Paladin. Now we both had an ear-worm. I had my sights on a BLM area just south of Price, Utah, called Horse Canyon Road Dispersed Campground. It is free and just across the road from a highway wayside with dumpsters and toilets.

We arrived around 9:45 am. No other campers were set up anywhere in the vicinity. We took the first spot, right near the highway. It’s just far enough away to somewhat muffle the vehicle noise. The access in and out is terrific. The ground is level. There are mountains in the background. The price is right.

And speaking of price, once set up, we headed into the town of Price. To our surprise, Price has a Walmart. We resisted the gravitational pull that this black hole was exerting, and passed it right by. I was so proud of us. Instead, we bought two $5 tickets for the Utah State University Prehistoric Dinosaur Museum in downtown Price.

The displays were informative and nicely presented. They had some wonderful fossils; a great layout of the various stages of life on earth; a collection of giant dinosaur footprints; and several large dinosaur skeletons set up in imposing looking postures. It was well worth the $5.

Although these skeletons are made of cast bones, the museum has the real bones in storage for further study. These cast bones were made from molds of the actual bones. The bones were recovered from the Cleveland Quarry just a few miles away from Price. The Cleveland Quarry is one of the most prolific dinosaur bone quarries in the world.

Beautiful, perfectly preserved complete fossils.

My primary goal in this area of Utah, was to drive up Nine-Mile Canyon Road, which has the largest concentration of petroglyphs in the world. We love this art form.

I was fearing a crappy gravel wash-board goat path, but the road was a smooth, fairly new blacktop road that twisted its way through the beautiful canyon. There was a small black rain cell tucked way up the canyon. As we continued along the road, the cell kind of led us along. At one point we heard lots of rumbling thunder and the temperature dipped to a cool 79º. That didn’t last long and we never felt a drop, but we did come across several miles of wet road.

We also followed a pickup truck loaded with twenty-something red-necky looking kids. The cab was crowded with guys hanging out the passenger side window. The truck bed was overloaded with guys holding up their beer bottles to toast us and smoking the biggest cigar I have ever seen. They were loaded and rowdy but harmless and havin’ fun. I remember my dad letting me ride in the trailer in the old days as he barreled down the highway. Gosh, that was gloriously fun.

Finding the petroglyphs was a bit like an Easter egg hunt. A few spots had vague signs with no arrows or specific information as to where to look. That was somewhat helpful, but several had no indicators at all. Two areas stood out: the Owl petroglyph, and the Hunting Party scene.

Each stop was fun as we squealed with delight when we came across another panel hidden by a bush or a stray drawing in an isolated spot. Interestingly, we could see that some artists were more talented than others. There were crude drawings and there were finely detailed etchings. Most were solid figures, but occasionally we saw figures drawn with only dots, like old black-and-white half-tone newpaper pictures

Nine Mile Creek Canyon is home to many cattle ranches with rustic ranch houses and weathered sheds. The creek provide a bit of vital water in the canyon valley. The nicely paved road winds for miles. We drove up about 40 miles before turning around. I’m not sure how far it goes. It may just dead end. My maps didn’t seem to match what we were seeing. I couldn’t get a signal to check Google Maps. We had to just wing it. Of course, that was half the fun!

What we came for - petroglyphs!

The temperature touched 90º at one point, but mostly stayed in the mid-80s. What a nice reprieve from yesterday. I was sad to have missed going back to finish up Arches National Park, and we hadn’t explored Dead Horse Point State Park, but the pleasant temperatures we experienced today made up for it.

Glossary of terms used for newcomers: 1) V-Jer. The name of our camper. 2) Saturn. The name of our Van. 3) Duende. Our mischievous gremlin that breaks things. 4) Tata. The good gremlin that helps us fix Duende’s dirty work. 5) The Black Hole. This is what we call Walmart because every time we go in for just a couple of items, we come out spending way more than we figured. 6) QT. Quaint Town. 7) Little Buddy. This is what we call our Dyson cordless stick vacuum.

Dave and Wanda

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