Nothing can stop me now!

OK!  I am on a roll!  Having learned a thing or two about photos and blogs and Facebook, it is beginning to come together.  Now I am a crazy woman on a mission, and that mission is to supplement PAST entries with photos that belong with them.  Please scroll back through and gaze at added photos, all the way back several pages.  You WILL enjoy that.  Pictures are worth thousands of words.  Sorry, no photo of a scorpion or Black Widow — yet!

Photo of “Balanced Rock”

 

"Balanced Rock" -- 3500 tons of sandstone

This is one of my favorites.  It feels so mysterious.  (Even without fog.)

It is unspeakably wonderful to have these formations in my back yard.

Eastern regions, storm to north

 

Light and Shadows #1

Driving along — the light pierced — I pulled over and snapped quickly.  Then it was gone.

Seize the moment!

 

Storm clouds at Balanced Rock

3500 tons of sandstone will come crashing down one day when the neck erodes.

First try at a photo

 

See?!?! I am really here!!

Huck’s Trading Post & Museum

Huck!

Blanding, Utah, is not an eye-popping town.  It sits forlornly on the Colorado Plateau with nothing to boast about, but with plenty of attractive destinations within an hour of it.  It is desperately trying to become something, as evidenced by the new “Smoothie Shack” and the “Peace Tea Cafe” on Main Street.  One surmises that real estate is pretty cheap in Blanding.  It has some decent trailers, that’s for sure.

Just on the south edge of town sits an unassuming log building with an ancient sign out front beckoning travelers to “Huck’s Trading Post & Museum.”  Having been alerted to this crazy joint by a ranger, we pull in to take in the local flavor.  A hand-lettered sign on the door says, “I’m out back. Ring the buzzer and I’ll be there in about five minutes.”  I ring.  Shortly, an ancient-looking man drives up the side of the building, rolls down his window, and says in a hoarse croaking voice, “I’ll be right there.”  

Jess and I exchange glances, and I know immediately that we are in for a treat — a cultural experience without parallel.  The door opens, and a hunchbacked old guy with almost no voice (“Cancer,” he croaked, pointing to his throat) greets us and welcomes us into his establishment.  Huck is about 5’1” and wears well-worn coveralls. He has a twinkle in his eye.  You can look around his trading post (the front room) or, for a reasonable $5 (“just for the lights, you know”), he will personally guide you through his private museum, leaning on his cases and breathing hard as he moves along.  We forked over $10 and entered the adjoining room.

Some people are hoarders.  Huck has spent most of his 81 years being an uber-hoarder.  He had a book signed by Bob Hope, a steel toy bus from a World’s Fair about six decades ago, and everything in between.  But that was just the warm-up display case.  The real stuff lay in countless glass drugstore cases in the back room.  My eyes could not take it all in without my lower jaw falling open.  Huck’s favorite pastime was going artifact-hunting, and he did that his whole life.  Sixteen glass boxes, housing 100 arrow points each, clung to his walls.  The entire back wall consisted of stone tools — axes, mauls, etc. — hung along every log.  Must’ve had hundreds.  The Anasazi pottery, however, was what freaked me out the most.

Pots of every size and pattern and style filled his glass cases. (“Would you mind not touching the glass? It’s hard to clean.”) “Huck, where in the world did you GET all this?”  “Oh, here and there, I found it all, least what wasn’t given to me…”, he croaked.  The black-on-white patterns dazzled my eyes and captivated my imagination.  I pictured archeologically savvy site-robbers going out with flashlights and digging on federal lands.  I pictured hushed barterings in smoky back rooms, and exchanges after dark behind the old log building.  I pictured every possible way Huck could have gotten so many pots, many worth thousands of dollars.  I noticed the wall-mounted security camera panning the room, and the “No Photographs” sign in his scrawly handwriting.

The mural of pot sherds didn’t bother me so much as the mural of arrow points with the letters “San Juan County, Utah” CUT OUT OF OLD SHERDS that had been found and were considered ‘junk.’  One could clearly see the intricate designs painted on the ancient pottery that had been recycled into block letters.  I cringed.  I thought of precious cultural resources, irreplaceable .  “Back 50 years ago, nobody thought that was anything, ” he justified. I could tell Jess was having the same trouble dealing with this ‘collection’ that we knew was of questionable origins. Huck may have been good friends with the sheriff.  

By the time we finished we had seen sandals woven by the Basket Makers of yucca leaves, jewelry fashioned from bones, mortars and pestles and axe sharpeners of stone, dioramas of Puebloan villages, fossil mammal teeth, and other things too numerous to recall.  Huck’s collection is second to none.  I heartily recommend Huck’s place to anyone passing through Blanding.  

But… ask Huck some hard questions, even if you know he is going to give you the answer he thinks you want to hear.  There aren’t many more like him out there.  Enjoy his self-taught expertise to the hilt.  Huck doesn’t look as if he will make it many more summers.