Wednesday, August 24, 2022
Scenic Utah
Posted By Babs De Lay on August 24, 2022, 4:00 AM
One of the best day trips out of Salt Lake City is to head southeast to 9 Mile Canyon, outside of Price (actually, outside of Wellington). The canyon name is a misnomer—it is not nine miles long. It's actually about 43 miles long from the highway, through the mountains and up to Duchesne, before the road back to Park City/Salt Lake.
It's worth a stop at the Balanced Rock Eatery and Pub on Main Street for pancakes (all day!) bigger than the size of your head, burgers, sannies and dinner entrees. The little town has done a great job of changing from empty, boarded-up storefronts, saloons and hotels to a little vibrant art community of roughly 2,500 residents.
Once you're full as a tick, it's not far to the turnoff for 9 Mile Canyon. You can see thin layers of coal (it is Carbon County!) in the hills, smell fragrant cedar pines and sage brush, discover colors of earth on your drive and, best of all, see the infamous petroglyphs along the roadside.
Large "newspaper rocks" of stories depicting humanoids, sheep, deer, snakes, giant owls and many dots in patterns that look like calendars. Sadly, a–holes of this century have scrawled their own graffiti alongside the precious Native art, including adding vaginas and penises to some of the smaller human figures carved into the rock. It's a felony and a bad federal rap to be caught damaging any of these sites.
Scenic Utah is a nonprofit organization out to win my heart. They appreciate our history and our vistas. These volunteers are out to educate us, the Legislature and larger communities about protecting dark skies, scenic byways and to ban electronic billboards to reduce light pollution. They help ensure local governments keep their rights to regulate billboards that are "intrusive eyesores that harm the visual environment, reduce property values and detract from community character."
They appreciate, as I do, our visual environs. They have found that more than 75% of Utahns believe billboards are intrusive eyesores that harm the visual environments where they are located.
Having previously served for eight years as a volunteer Planning Commissioner for Salt Lake City, I got a hard and fast education on how powerful the billboard companies are and how difficult it is to get rid of a single one. Go to scenicutah.org to find out more about their vision and purpose. Best of all, they are having a photo contest (deadline Sep. 1) with categories like "scenic night skies," "my rural roots," parks in both towns and cities, "visual pollution we wish would go away" and "off the beaten path" (i.e. remote or hard to reach places in our beautiful state). Let's all celebrate and preserve the vistas of this great state.
About The Author
Babs De Lay
A full-time broker/owner of Urban Utah Homes and Estates, Babs De Lay serves on the Salt Lake City Historic Landmark Commission. A writer and golfer, you'll find them working as a staff guardian at the Temple at Burning Man each year.
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