Let me start by saying ALL of the Utah family thought we were nuts going to “Dinosaurland.” All of them. We decided that since we were going to be in Stansbury Park for 11 days we should take a break and give Mike and us a short time apart. And we have not been to Dinosaur National Monument before. Cherie and Eric decided to join us and we had a great time! And we probably won’t go there again unless we have some reason to travel down Utah State Road 40, but the 4 of us did enjoy our 2 day break!
First off, you have quite the drive from Mike’s house to get there. In their area of Utah, the high school teams play as far away as Vernal- 4 hours by bus. And that team always has to travel as much as 4 hours to games. School anyone? So we start off towards SLC and then Park City where some of the Winter Olympic Games were held. Pretty nice mountains. After Heber, you go to the pretty standard high cold desert that is much of Utah. Then we entered the Wasatch or maybe the Uinta mountains and it is beautiful. But then down into Strawberry Reservoir and the city of Vernal. Vernal is slightly bigger than Tooele, it is similar in many ways. Except they have a Freddy’s – great burger, chicken sandwiches and frozen custard. Great custard! And like Roswell NM, they carry the theme of dinosaurs everywhere (Roswell has their aliens!). Our hotel, Dinosaur Inn and Suites was nice for a motel type building and had a very good breakfast.
We ventured into the monument area and went to the visitors center at the quarry. From there you bus into the quarry for which this area is famous. The building was relatively new and protects a small section of the original quarry. There was a bone jam at some point in the far past and these bones are just piled on top of one another, just feet apart in the side of the mountain. You walk up a ramp to a higher part of the quarry to see bone after IDENTIFIABLE bone (OK Cherie and I could identify most of them but there are even long strings of obvious vertebrae for example)! Then as you work down to the bottom floor, there are complete skeletons, displays about all the places some of these complete skeletons have been sent, and you actually get to touch real fossils just sticking out of the dirt. Most of the mountain has been removed (dug through) but this area is still left. It was pretty cool. We then drove around this section of the monument ending up at the Josie Morris home site. You get to walk around inside her cabin and see the grounds. It was right by the Green River and she smartly used a canyon to pen up her cattle. Less fencing that way!
The second day we went to the Canyon side of the Monument. You travel back and forth between Utah and Colorado; you actually pass through Dinosaur, Co on your way in. This area is mostly a drive and it was pretty cold to do any hiking. We all found out that Cherie loves taking pictures of ants and lizards. Hundreds of pictures with her new camera. It was fun seeing her and Dave interact as she learned to better use the camera. He let her use some of his lenses that she did not have yet. After we lunched in Rangely, Co (great Mexican!) which was down the Stegosaurus Highway from Dinosaur, we hiked the fossil trail out of the quarry area. Fossils just on the side of the hills. It was so cool, and Cherie took lots and lots of lizard pictures!
We might have had more frozen custard at Freddy’s the second night and got ready to head back to Stansbury the next day. All in all a nice 2 day break.
