May 3rd – 4th, 2023
From Dewey, we headed to Grand Junction, Colorado to rejoined the Highway 139 and the way to Dinosaur National Monument. We had a taste of things to come when we went through the town of Dinosaur!
Dinosaur – Colorado
Dinosaur is a small town ( population 240) and predictably with such a name, streets are named after different dinosaurs and street corners are adorned with dinosaur statues…( not always attractive !)
[Click on picture to open gallery]
Further along we crossed again into Utah
Also using the dinosaur theme!
Dinosaur National Monument is spread over 210,000 acres (85,000 hectares) along the Colorado and Utah border. Each part of the monument offers different experiences and things to see.
The Colorado side offers spectacular canyon country scenery, but we were there to see dinosaurs fossils so, we went to the Dinosaur Quarry Exhibition Hall in Utah.
The historic fossil quarry is covered by a modern building, which protects the site where approximately 1,500 dinosaur bones are exhibited in-situ on the side of a hill where they were discovered. Fossilized bones were found in 1909 by Earl Douglass, a paleontologist from the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh and over the following 6 years Douglass sent over 700,000 pounds of fossilized bones, including full skeletons, to museums throughout the country. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the site Dinosaur National Monument in 1915. Douglass began envisioning a museum which would display excavation sites in their original state but the current building was not completed until the late fifties.
Here, you can gaze upon the remains of numerous different species of dinosaurs from the Late Jurassic period, including Allosaurus, Apatosaurus, Camarasaurus, Diplodocus, and Stegosaurus, along with several others. There are even several places where you can touch real 150 million year old dinosaur fossils!
The displays are informative and rangers are available to answer questions.
[Click on picture to open gallery]
There are a couple of short hikes around the quarry which go around the hills near the Exhibition Hall.
We were lucky to see Dinosaur milkvetch (Astragalus saurinus Barneby), a flower found in Dinosaur National Monument and the surrounding areas and no where else in the world! For once, we were right in time for blooming season!
Flaming Gorge recreation Area
We continued to Vernal and then on to Flaming Gorge Recreation Area.
The Flaming Gorge NRA is located in the northeast corner of Utah and the southwest corner of Wyoming. It is South of I-80, between Green River and Rock Springs, Wyoming and extends into the Uintah Mountains towards Vernal, Utah.
Its centerpiece is the 91 miles long Flaming Gorge Reservoir, created by a dam on the Green River. It is an all-encompassing outdoor recreation destination. With more than 200,000 acres of land and water, Flaming Gorge is a scenic playground for boating, water skiing, paddling, camping and backpacking in addition to some of the best fishing in the west.
The visitor Centre does not opened until the end of May but we drove up to Red Canyon Overlook and had a splendid view onto the reservoir and its surrounded red cliffs. There were still patches of snow on the ground.
[Click on picture to open gallery]
We drove on to the town of Green River and found a spot on the outskirts where we were visited by wild horses!
