July 15
Surely we would be able to find a loaf of bread and some fresh veggies on our way to Dinosaur National Monument. We drove through two significantly-sized towns, but found no grocery stores.
After about 2 hours and 70 miles we pulled into Dinosaur NM, a 210,000 acre area with an incredibly diverse landscape and 23 different geologic formations from 2500 million years ago to 2 mya The monument stretches from eastern Utah into Colorado. The Green River and Yampa River flow through the park.
We made a quick stop at the visitor center on the Utah side then continued on for three miles to Green River Campground. The campground sits along the pretty Green River under large cottonwood trees. Unfortunately, about half of the sites were closed due to “dangerous conditions”, large limbs possibly falling on your site. We nevertheless found a good site. After lunch we headed back to the visitor center to take the trolley up to the Quarry Exhibit Hall. One can also take the Fossil Discovery Trail, a 2.4 mile round trip hike. It was in the mid-90s under a glaring sun so we took the trolley.
At the Quarry Exhibit Hall one can view a huge slab of a layered rock face from the Morrison Formation. About 150 million years ago dinosaur bones were buried in an ancient river. In 1909 the first bones were discovered. Today this rock face, protected inside a building, contains 1,600 partially excavated dinosaur bones from 10 different species, mostly gigantic plant-eating sauropods, such as Apatosaurus and Diplodocus, and Stegosaurs. The scale of the bones is truly mind-boggling. That they were once part of living creatures so long ago is even more amazing. A few large bones are available for touching.
Since we wimped out riding the trolley up to the Hall, we wanted to hike the trail down. The trolley was just too convenient and the boys complained just enough about the heat, so that only William ended up hiking down, stopping at a few highlighted fossils along the way.
After dinner we hiked a piece of the three mile River Trail that runs along the river between our campground and Split Mountain Campground. The scenery of Split Mountain, cut in half by the Green River over the past five million years was beautiful. We saw a river otter floating by on the river down below.
A huge thunderstorm threatened for a long time, passed very slowly overhead, but deposited only a sprinkling.
Our campsite offered lots of entertainment. Cute ground squirrels we constantly running around. A few were even bold enough to go under our chairs and between our feet looking for something edible we might have dropped. At dinnertime the squirrel would circle our picnic table. One climbed our camper steps, one hop away from going inside. Ethan said we might have to call the “Turtleman” from the show Call of the Wildman to have him removed.
July 16
In the through morning we hiked the nearly five mile Desert Voices and Sound of Silence Trails which loop through the desert. It was very hot. We saw lots of cottontails, lizards and a hummingbird, and of course lots of beautiful and varied rock formations.
After lunch we went down to the river to cool off. The current is very strong in the middle, but less so at the edges. The boys played for a long time arranging the river rocks into fish corrals and playing in the sand. We saw a large crayfish that provided William and Esther some entertainment while waiting for the boys to finish playing.
Later we drove down to Josie Morris Cabin, a homestead inhabited by a lone woman for 50 years until her death around 1964 at the age of 90. We hiked the 1.5 mile Hog Canyon Trail which leads from Josie’s primitive cabin to a box canyon she used to naturally corral her animals. We saw many snakes along the trail. One non-venemous snake was sufficiently annoyed by Liam’s repeated “petting” that it rapidly vibrated its tail in the dry leaves, making a rattling sound, just like a rattlesnake. We thought there was indeed a rattler under the same brushy vegetation and we stepped back. The snake’s action had served its purpose.
On the drive back we stopped at petroglyphs and pictographs carved into and painted on the cliffs by the Freemont people over 1000 years ago. We saw symbols that were very similar to those made by the Freemont people we saw on last year’s trip at Capitol Reef NP, UT.
It would have been nice to experience Dinosaur NM on the Colorado side but one has to leave the park in Utah, drive east and reenter in Colorado, a significant detour. There is evidently awesome scenery in the canyons of Green River and Yampa River. An impressive mountain, Steamboat Rock sits where the Yampa River joins the Green River. It is worn into a thin strip, completely surrounded by rivers on three side.
The Davids' Cross-Country Trip 