Nine Mile Caynon

Last Friday (June 18) we went on a family trip... After driving for about 2 hours we finally reached 9 Mile Canyon. This canyon has historical significance - it has petroglyphs and other remains of the Fremont Indians. (For those of you who also read my cooking blog, this post will seem familiar but it will have some more details.) At the end of this post is information taken from the travel guide we had so if you want to know more you can read basically what it said...

Why did we take a 2 hour drive (By the way we only drove about 50 miles to get to this canyon...) to go to this canyon? Well exactly 5 years ago to the day we went on a date to this same canyon. I had asked him on a date for a picnic and he had previously mentioned that he wanted to see this canyon. I blindfolded him so he did not know where we were going - I later learned that he got mildly car sick - but he did handle the blindfolding really well! This time I did not blindfold him because obviously he knew where we were going.

There were a few differences - 5 years ago I made a Brazilian themed meal (because he served a mission in Brazil), this time we had Kabobs. 5 years ago we ate first and then looked at the petroglyphs in half of the canyon, this time we looked first (we went to the half of the canyon we had missed before because it got dark) and then ate. Eating last turned out to be a bad idea because by the time we got to the picnic area it was almost dark! The major difference - 5 years ago we did not have a 15 month old son! I don't think he was too excited about all the driving and getting in and out of the car. (To see all of these pictures and a few more: click here.)

Part of the reason I wanted to head to the part of the canyon we had not seen was because my friend is writing a work of fiction that deals with the Fremont Indians. She currently lives in New York so I knew she would LOVE getting these photos.

The first stop we made was to find a grainery. It is located in the photo above - can you find it. The photo below is what it looks like. This grainery has some issues - the front is missing, but we're actually grateful that it is so we can see inside! An intact grainery will be coming later.

Here is another view of it:

This view shows the wood top that the grainery has. I find it really fascinating - what I find more fascinating... How did they get to these? For those of you who couldn't find the grainery in the first picture I have it circled below:

The next stop we made was at a very popular petroglyph panel called the Great Hunt. This one has been featured in National Geographic.

and the description:

And the needed family photo taken with the timer function on the camera so we can look at them later and laugh at how silly we looked... Daniel is ducking, I have no idea why!

Moving on, we stopped at a trail head:

This is a sign pointing to trail for Fremont Village - the real trail goes to the right - there are a few other trails that lead in different directions, but they are not the real and die off about half way up the hill... I only know this because we seemed to take all the wrong trails first. I climbed halfway up a hill before realizing I was really climbing an animal trail. By the time we found the right trail I was exhausted and only made it to this rock:

Which had been dug out underneath and was probably a storage area.

It was quite a hike to get to this point even without having made a few wrong turns... I decided for my health (I felt I was getting heat exhaustion) that I needed to get back to my water supply. Yeah, I know silly me for not bringing it on the trail, but I honestly did not think it would be as long as it was! (It was longer than it seemed to be and taking the wrong trail first definitely did not help!)

Here is another grainery that we found along the road. This one has the front intact so you can see what they looked like.

The grainery is found in this picture... this is what we had to go through to find it - and I will not have a photo with it circled this time. Good Luck. All I can say is those two trees at the cliff base - go from about their location to the right.

Now here are a few more of the petroglyphs we saw:

Traveling along the road we also saw:

this deer and I saw a bird that we did not get a picture of, unfortunately. We also saw cliff swallows and their nests. We had them really close to my house so I forget how awesome they are for others to see - Daniel loves seeing them.

It was a LONG trip and I did get a killer headache - which confirmed that I was probably going to get heat exhaustion if I would have continued on past the rock with the holes in it. It was a fun excursion. Maybe in 5 years I'll forget how long we drove on unpaved roads and be temped to try it again... Maybe not. Now I have a record of how long of a trip it was. For all those who may want to visit this place, go to it from Price not Myton! Trust me on this one.

For those of you who want a little history lesson:

Nine Mile canyon is actually 40 miles long... there are several stories about how it got the name. One is that a creek named Nine Mile Creek by mapmaker Bishop who went on an expedition with John Wesley Powell in 1869.

There are actually two types of rock art: pictographs and petroglyphs. Pictographs are painted on rocks using colors naturally found in minerals. Petroglyphs are cut into the rock. The rock art in Nine-Mile Canyon depicts both humans and animals. The Fremont had their own art style. Their human figures are horned, trapezoidal-shaped bodies. Often they have elaborations such as necklaces, earrings, shields, swords, loincloths, and headdresses. They also develo9ped a stylized way of making animals. Other designs may have been purely decorative or they may represent calendars or maps.

The Fremont:

They occupied the canyon as early as 300-500 A.D. They were a primitive people and did not shape rocks for tools or for building as the Anasazi or the Pueblo Indians did. Also the Fremont used weapons and shields that are not found in the Anasazi culture indicating that the Fremont may have migrated from a different area of the country.

The Fremont built their living quarters above the flood plain fot he river. They were part Farmer and part hunter. They raised corn, beans, and squash. Some of their crops they dired and stored in granaries built in the rocks. They hunted all types of game from deer and moutain sheep to rabbits and rodents. Petroglyphs of such animals can be seen often in Nine-Mile Canyon. They supplemented their diet with seeds, nuts and roots.

They had permanent dwelling in semi-subterranean pit houses. The houses were built of wood and mud and were entered through an opening in the roof. Some of the structures still standing were dry laid (build without mortar.)

They wore very little clothing in the summer and relied on robes and blankets in the colder weather. They had distinctive moccasins made of hide and dew-claw hobnails. The hobnails were on the heels of the moccasins to keep them from sliding. (having hiked up to the area of a village I can understand the need for this - especially in the winter!) They made a simple smooth pottery with little decoration. Baskets were far more common.

Info taken from 9 Mile Canyon - A Guide. Utah's Castle Country PO BOX 1037 Price Utah 84051

May...

I just realized I have not posted anything from the Month of May... We've had some fun - Eric helped me make some banana pudding which he thoroughly enjoyed eating...
We've started going to the park since it has been warm enough to actually want to be outdoors.

Eric went with us on an asparagus picking trip to my grandfather's farm. He got to see and pet the horses which he loved. (The photos are in reverse order because I'm too lazy to want to rearrange all of them.)









Daniel had a birthday. As you can see Eric loved helping his Dad open presents.

And just look at the cute card Eric made for his Daddy: (We had an adventure making this one as he wanted to eat all the writing instruments instead of write with them.)
We also had this photo of our family taken:
Daniel and I took Eric birdwatching with us as well.
We went on our 5 year anniversary of our first date, which was incidently birdwatching. We went to the same place. It was great fun. True to my not learning lessons, I forgot to put sunscreen on my face - just like I did 5 years ago... below are some of the birds we saw.
That was our month in a nutshell. Oh and Daniel's been trucking along on his thesis... he may actually be able to get somewhere now! He's gotten past a couple of roadblocks. YEY!

Look What he's doing now!

I've been kind of slow at posting this video of Eric... It was taken on April 12th - it was the first good video we have of him walking!


Sorry it is sideways... I tried to fix it but something happened.

The last 6.5 months...

Just a glimpse into our lives during the past 6.5 months... (long post sorry)

We moved from Madison to my parents and it took 4 days, we wanted to do it in 3 but it did not happen... I suppose I was being a little ambitious due to the fact we had a 6 month old child.
Life was going pretty well when we first moved... My mom was making trips to visit her mom who was in the hospital 3 hours away, but was moved to a care center shortly after we moved. While in the care center they turned down her oxygen and did not monitor her percentage - basically if it were not for her roommate we are pretty sure she would have died that day. Due to the oxygen deprivation, Grandma was transferred to the hospital again. After a week or two there they were ready to transfer her to the same care center... This all was happening while my mom was in the ER with my little brother who ended up having Pneumonia. We ended up having her transferred to a care center in a city that was closer - the care center where we live would not take her because they did not have a private room. The private room was needed because of a very contagious infection she picked up during her stay at the first care center. So she was 1.5 hours away, instead of 3.

During this my little sister had 2 or 3 seizures (I can't remember I know it was at least 2) in which we made trips to the ER.

After a week or two in the care center, my grandmother passed away about a month after we moved (on October 15). My older sister and her family came as well as my older brother (so my whole family was together which was, the house was crowded!

In November, Valerie had another seizure, Dennis got pneumonia again and Valerie was put in the hospital for the week of Thanksgiving. Daniel and I went to visit his family and Eric fell off the high chair and we ended up going to the ER. Everything was fine with Eric. My little sister got out of the hospital and we had Thanksgiving with my family on Saturday since they ate the hospital's version of Thanksgiving.

December started out great. However, our computer died on Dec. 11 and then the next day on the way home from taking Valerie to the Neurologist, Val went to the ER and ended up getting put in the hospital. Valerie was transferred on Dec 13th to a hospital about 2 hours away, she had some kind of respiratory issues - still not sure exactly what was going on. She was a very sick little girl, it was hard to go see her 'hooked up to half the hospital' as Daniel put it. We were sure she would be released just after Christmas, so I put a makeshift Christmas together for our family, my dad, brother and older brother. It was more work than I care to remember. A few days later when the Pulmonologist was ready to release her she started having seizures almost constantly. On New Year's Eve, she was transferred to the hospital that is 3 hours away, where they put her into an induced coma in hopes to get her to stop having seizures. She took about 2 weeks to wake up mostly and then they let her come home. The coma medicine is not quite out of her system so one of her seizure medicine doses is almost tripled until her body starts metabolizing it - the drug they used for the coma inhibits the metabolizing of the seizure medicine.

During this time, Dennis got pneumonia again and ended up getting a feeding tube put in the first part of January. Also, the computer repair place here could not fix or recover out data so on one trip to visit Val we dropped our computer off at my uncle's (he and his son both work with computers and fix them) so he could look at it.

Shortly after Valerie came home, a puppy came to join our family. The puppy loves Eric and will let him do pretty much anything to him without reacting.

In February Daniel and I went to visit his family and picked up our computer and the data on the way out - we got it all back which was SO exciting.

My sister and her family came to visit in March the week before Eric's birthday. We stayed up with them until 1 or 2 am so I got behind on my sleep. After they left Eric got sick (with the sleep deprived parents) and we had to take him to Urgent care as he had a fever of 102.5,. He was put on an antibiotic. Valerie has had to go to the ER a couple of times because she is still not doing 100%, lately she has been having 'episodes' each day where her oxygen saturation drops and we have to work to keep it above 90% for at least an hour.

Also during this time I think I had a mild case of postpartum depression. I never actually went to the doctor because I didn't want to have to pay the outrageous cost of a doctor visit, and I could actually function... but I feel like I have not done a very good job at being a friend and keeping in contact with everyone. I can honestly feel a HUGE difference now and realize that I should have gotten help, but hind sight is 20/20. This feels a little unpersonalized but I want to apologize for being disconnected in the past 5 months.

And if you're wondering how Daniel's thesis is coming, let's just say it's doing pretty well considering.

My how you've grown

Eric - 1 Year!

So now that it's been almost two weeks since his birthday... I'm finally posting pictures of the cute little boy! While it is hard to believe that he is one, when I think back on everything that has happened in the past year - it seems like it has been longer than a year!

Here he is with the green stuffed animal... it looks so small now!
And here is Eric's favorite stuffed animal, he hugs this puppy every time he gets it!
It is so sweet to see how much he is attached to this puppy!
Look at how grown up he looks!
This photo shoot I took a lot of pictures of Eric being Eric, and I fell in love with this one!
It was warm enough to take some pictures outside.
We got a lot of cute smiles from him... it was cute.
This is the same picture, only with the background blurred, what do you think?
This smile makes my day!
Here are the boys in my life... They all get along very well.
Happy First Birthday Eric!

Birthday Party

So we celebrated Eric's first birthday on Wednesday. It was almost a week early, but his four cousins from my side of the family were visiting so it made it more fun!
I tried my hand at decorating a cake... It didn't turn out perfect, but at least you can tell what it is suppose to be!
Of course, Eric did not care what it looked like.
He only cared that it was chocolate!
Yep, he enjoyed it very much.
My mistake was not to remove his shirt with white sleeves... We'll see if I can get it out!
Eric loved playing with the cake as well as eating it.
Doesn't he just look like he's enjoying eating that cake!?!
Now for my confession, this was not the first cake Eric got to eat. A month ago we went to visit Daniel's family and we had a joint birthday party for Eric and his cousin who is one month older than him.
He enjoyed this chocolate cake as well!