Nine Mile Canyon

Between the craziness of moving for the third time in 2 years, buying a house, sending one kid off to college,  adjusting to life with just one kid at home, welcoming a new missionary home,  Glen adjusting to a new busy job yet again, finding all new doctors...again, etc.; we frankly haven't done too much in the way of getting to know our new hometown since we moved here. You could even go so far to say that we've been quite the homebodies over the last several months.     People would tell me about interesting things we should do only to act on them too late, if ever.   

  Finally, after one too many weekends in a row of doing house stuff yet again,  we spontaneously decided to forget our to-do lists and take a little road trip to Nine Mile Canyon.   It's about a three hour drive each way, so we  we packed up some snacks and brought along Denali (who unlike Rocky randomly really likes car rides) and made it into an all-day adventure!

The main attraction in Nine Mile Canyon is all the well-preserved petroglyphs along the way.   Petroglyphs are fascinating to me and I loved the idea of seeing a glimpse of some pre-historical messages from the past.  Apparently there are over 1000 petroglyphs throughout Nine Mile Canyon and it's often referred to as the World's Longest Outdoor Art Gallery.   Historians believe that these particular petroglyphs are about 800-1100 years old and  were made by the people in the Fremont tribes of Central Utah. 

 There is little cell coverage in the area, so my sister ( who had been there several times before)  gave us good directions and a head's up on the best ones to stop at.

Here were some of the highlights of our petroglyphing/roadtripping adventures:  

"The Great Hunt" is one of the most famous and well-preserved petroglyphs in Utah, if not the world.   I had definitely seen pictures of it in history books before and it was a cool thing to see in person. 

Most of the petroglyphs do not have names (as far as we know) and we just enjoyed looking at them and speculating as to what kind of message they may have trying to communicate.  Or maybe they were just doodling.  Who knows?! 

This section had some modern rock art mixed in with the ancient...

I'm not sure what this one was called either, but we had fun trying to guess what that creature? was in the bottom right corner...

We also very much enjoyed the scenery....

This one is called the Buffalo Panel.  

 The effort it must have taken to create this art seems like it would have been pretty immense.  Combine that with with the fact that these were created with prehistoric tools and it's pretty crazy when you notice all the details!

This owl panel was one of our favorites.  As any of you long-time readers knows, we love birds...and owls are one of our favorites!  

This was another favorite of ours!  It's called "Pregnant Buffalo" and if you look closely at the buffalo, you'll see a baby one inside!   It made us smile.  

Denali did great on our drive and we very much enjoyed getting out and exploring somewhere new.   Now we just need to do it more often.  :)  

Fields of Sunshine

Sometime last week I saw a picture in the Washington Post of a little girl wandering through a field of sunflowers that towered over her.  I was immediately intrigued and wanted to know where such a beautiful place in the DC area could possibly be.  Luckily the caption gave the location and after doing a little investigating I was happy to discover that not only was it not too far from our home but that it also just so happened to be right in the middle of peak blooming time.  I immediately started making plans to go.  

 On Saturday we drove to McKee-Beshers Wildlife Management Area in Poolesville, Maryland to  see the fields of blooming sunshine for ourselves.  We hadn't realized when we got there that there are actually several different sunflower fields, so we were a little disappointed when the first one we came to looked a little wilty already.  Luckily we could see a second field not far in the distance which was much perkier looking.  We walked onward and were officially entranced! 

Even the drive to the sunflower fields was a beautiful sight in and of itself!

We visited the field right on  River Road, which was the easiest to get to, but it was also the most crowded.   We also visited some on  Hunting Quarter's Road, but they were a bit of a walk to get to (and a little past full bloom).  Our favorite field of all was the one on Sycamore Landing Road.   There weren't any other people there and it wasn't a long walk from the car.  Most of our pictures are from that field.

We also enjoyed watching the bees, dragonflies, butterflies, and goldfinches that abounded in the fields of yellow.  

Now my kids are eagerly watching the sunflowers that Adam planted in our yard earlier this summer.  They're actually quite a bit bigger than this now, but not as photogenic since beetles have been eating up the leaves.

Here are my favorite two pictures from the day: 

My family (except Spence and I) soaking in the sunshine all around them. 

And our own little ray of sunshine totally in her element!

"Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow. It's what sunflowers do."

~ Helen Keller