Flaming Gorge

While on our summer vacation to the Vernal area, we drove up to see Flaming Gorge. It was a scenic drive. The road from Vernal to Flaming Gorge is educational, too. As you drive past rock formations, signs tell you which geologic era the formation is from and what fossils are likely found in it.

We checked out the dam and the visitor's center. We didn't spend too long. We could have taken the dam tour, but didn't have time.

For some reason I didn't take very many pictures. Here's one of the two I took:

Dinosaur National Monument: Day 2 and 3

We started out the day with a hike. We'd seen a few on our auto tour that we wanted to do, but had run out of time for hiking (well, that and the fact that while we were doing the tour it was mid-day and hotter than hades).

So, the first hike we did was to Swelter Shelter. It wasn't a very long hike (you could see the rock shelter from the road), but it was an interesting Fremont Rock Shelter with petroglyphs and pictographs in it. I can totally see why the archaeologists who excavated it named it Swelter Shelter. It was only 9am but the sun was already baking the shelter.

Also baking in the sun, all over the park, were lots and lots of lizards.

Here's Ms. Archaeologist with an archaeological site. I bored my children mightily throughout the trip with talks of petroglyphs, basketry, pottery, bifaces, and atlatls. Someday they might actually be interested.

James, however, was interested in this little cave near the site.

Next, we hiked a bit around the Bassett homestead. There were two trails. Both went to box canyons. The first one was rather sunny and hot and the boys got tired of it quickly, so we never got to the end. We stopped at a picnic table under some trees that Josie Bassett planted to have lunch, after which we did the other hike. It was much shorter and completely shady. Much more pleasant with three little boys.

Henry even fell asleep while we hiked.

We sat in the shade to eat the trail mix I'd made that the boys had been begging for and took some pictures. James took this one.

All the hiking made for tuckered out boys, all of whom slept on the drive back to the visitor's center.

When we got there, James and Thomas perked up and went to a Children's Ranger Talk so they could pass off that part of their Junior Ranger program. They finished their booklet, took the Junior Ranger pledge, and got their badges. They thought that was pretty fun.

The next evening, we drove out to Dinosaur National Monument for the last time. We waited until the sun was quite low in the sky to do the Fossil Discovery Trail. I was impressed with James and Thomas for hiking as far as they did. We hiked about a mile and a half. We got up pretty high, too.
You can't tell here, but, Thomas is standing on a little ledge carved into the side of the rock so he could get high enough to touch this dinosaur bone.

This one was closer to the trail. There were a lot of dinosaur bones in this wall of rock.

The big thing at this park is the fossil wall that the visitor's center is built around, but since it's condemned, we didn't get to see that wall. But, this one was still pretty cool. Here's the visitor's center as seen from our hiking trail:

Before we left the Monument for the last time, I took a picture of the boys in their dinosaur t-shirts that we bought them (at Target!) for the trip.

Goodbye Dinosaur National Monument!

Dinosaur National Monument: Day 1

We spent part of our vacation this year at Dinosaur National Monument. We stayed in Vernal and spent about 3 days doing stuff in the monument.

On the first day we ate lunch at the Green River campground, since it was one of the few areas in the park with shade.

After lunch, we went over to the temporary visitor's center. The regular visitor's center is closed, since it is falling off the cliff. The building's foundation is falling and causing all the walls to shift and crack, therefore the building has been condemned. So, they've set up a temporary one at what looks like used to be a picnic pavilion or something. It has a roof and a couple walls, but mostly it's outside. When it closes, they put up a gate.

They have a few displays from the real visitors center set up in the temporary one. I think it works. You don't get to see the fossil wall, since the visitors center is built around it, but there are other fossils around.

I knew the visitor's center was closed when I was planning the trip, but I thought the boys would appreciate Dinosaur National Monument more now than later, so we continued with our plan anyway. Besides, the visitor's center is closed indefinitely, so who knows when they would rebuild anyway.

While there, we also checked out the "Dino Store." I love National Park Service bookstores. They used to bore me to tears when I was a kid (where are the toys and cheap souvenirs!?), but now I love them. Since I was in high school and college, whenever I go on vacation I buy books as souvenirs instead of junk that gets lost or broken or clutters up my house. I bought the boys some books on fossils, geology, and dinosaurs. I bought myself several books on the history of the area. I can't wait to read them! Thomas and James also got to pick out one dinosaur toy each.

That afternoon, we went on the Tilted Rocks Auto Tour.

Here the boys are by the Green River, which runs through the park:

The nice green land you can see is a ranch on the opposite side of the river from the main area of the park. Where the trees are is the campground we ate at.

By the time we got to these Fremont petroglyphs on the tour, Thomas had fallen asleep, so just James came with me to get a closer look.

The tour ended at Josie Bassett's homestead. We ate dinner there and then explored the homestead. Being an archaeologist and history buff, the house fascinated me. Josie Bassett homesteaded there in 1914 at the age of 40 and lived there alone until she died in 1964. She had no electricity or running water and was miles away from the nearest neighbor.

The home has not, for the most part, been restored. The park service treats it with benign neglect. It is kept up enough to keep it from falling down, but it has greatly deteriorated since it was last lived in in 1964. There are still old newspapers plastered to the walls in places, once used as insulation. And, scraps of wallpaper still hang.

The house fascinates me, and the more I learn about its owner, the more she fascinates me as well. I picked up a book about her at the "Dino Store" to learn more about her life. She was at one point a sometimes-cattle-rustler who hung out with Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch!

After that, we headed back to Vernal for the night.