Spring 2026 - Idaho, Utah, Arizona, 5.2.26 - 5.27.26, Part 2: Nine Mile Canyon, Utah

On our original itinerary, I had us driving seven and a half hours to Moab from City of Rocks. That’s certainly in our range, but then just a week before we left one of my sisters mentioned that some friends of hers had gone to Nine Mile Canyon. I had never heard of it so I looked it up. It is called “the world’s longest art gallery” due to tens of thousands of pictographs and petroglyphs all up and down the length of the canyon. The entire canyon is actually forty-six miles long and is located near the town of Wellington, Utah off US 6 which runs between Spanish Fork and Green River. Since we would be traveling down 6 anyway, I quickly added on another day to the trip.

From City of Rocks it was now a four and a half hour drive to Nine Mile RV Resort in Wellington. This was a very clean and well kept park with full hookups. Arriving before noon, we still had the entire afternoon to check out Nine Mile Canyon. I had found an extremely handy guide online with mileages for many of the most prominent art panels. I believe you can also get this guide from the tourism office in Price just up the road. We knew we were flirting with rain that afternoon so we brought our rain gear.

From US 6 we turned left onto paved Soldier Creek Road. Here we zeroed out the odometer and began to follow the coordinates I’d printed beforehand. The first twenty-four miles there is no rock art as it drives through sage and slowly enters Nine Mile Canyon where the road becomes Nine Mile Canyon Road. The first site was at 26..6 miles and had some nice art on the wall right by the road. Most of the sites listed in the guide are either right off the road or a short walk. There are thousands more not listed and you can simply explore and look for them if you have the time. By the time we got to our third stop the rain was picking up but we were equipped and soldiered on. One of the coolest sites was called the Owl Panel which not only had two different owls but also a big bear claw, several bighorn sheep and some men with big hands and fingers.

By now it was raining harder and so we skipped a couple of panels on the list that required longer hikes. Way up the canyon we turned onto a dirt road called Cottonwood Canyon Road. Just s short way down that road we came to The Great Hunt panel. This was an amazing scene, extremely well preserved of a large hunt complete with about twenty sheep and five or more hunters with bows and arrows. In the pouring rain, this was the last stop for us. I had wanted to explore a few of the side canyons that have roads but I guess we will just have to go back another time. The whole drive there and back only took a few hours but you could easily spend days exploring various nooks and crannies and most likely find all sorts of hidden gems.