The past couple days have been less eventful as a whole,
especially when compared with our normal excitement. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs the past few
days … up to 9000 feet and down to 5500 feet!
Driving south from WY, we passed over a long high plateau, oil fields
and cattle ranches. We made a quick fuel
stop just before we crossed back in Utah on our way toward Dinosaur National
Monument.
Entering the Flaming Gorge area of Utah from the border, we
found plenty of significant hills to keep Rob on his toes at the wheel. The campground we had chosen for the night
ended up being down a steady steep decline.
Arriving at the bottom, we found essentially a parking lot for a marina
– not exactly what we had hoped for! And
back up the hill we went!
We did find a nice campground down the road on a stream and
set up camp. We needed to stretch our
legs after the drive so we walked the short distance down the road to check out
the “big sheep creek geologic loop” drive.
Walking it just to get some exercise, we happened on some big horned
sheep right along the road – and neither one of us had brought a camera!
It just so happened that we were across from another
campsite we hadn’t known was there and walked over to ask they only people in
sight if they might take a photo for us and send it when they got back to
service. Sadly, as of this writing, the
photos have not arrived BUT it was fun to meet Kyle and his wife (ugh, names!)
and have a few laughs about our odd introduction. Thankfully, the sheep were still around the
next morning when we set out to tackle that 12.5 mile geologic loop on our
bikes.
Utah does an amazing job of educating in their nature
areas. With roadside markers for different
geologic features throughout the state, it’s fun to learn little facts as you
go along. That’s what our bike ride was
like. The path was beautiful and
interesting, both of which were particularly helpful because it was also ALL
UPHILL! About half way through the loop,
when the road started to go down, we had had enough and enjoyed the ride back down
the hill to the campsite.
With our exercise for the day out of the way, we got back on
the road for the final grueling stretch of road before Dinosaur. Notorious in the area and online, Hwy 191
south to Vernal touts a steep 8% grade decline for 7 or so miles. Rob did an amazing job getting us down the
hill (without burning up our brakes) and we stopped at our chosen campground
for the night.
The rest of the day was spent just taking it easy, something
we have not really practiced on this trip!
We walked to the reservoir and I caught a few rays and we sat in the
shade in our campsite and ate snacks and had a drink. We had grilled tuna steak for dinner when an
evening storm kept us in playing cards for the duration.
And today we spent at Dinosaur! Wow!
I’ve seen the reconstructed bones in museums repeatedly but was never as
impressed as I was seeing where those bones had laid. With timelines dating back 149 million years
and dinosaur bones in a pile on a mountainside, I found myself awestruck. They’ve done such a tasteful job protecting
this amazing site. Having excavated a
large portion of the wall providing skeletons for museums around the world,
what is left is what was an old river bottom where dinosaur bones piled up when
the creek ran dry. In the jumble of
bones the archaeologists do their work.
Numbering and logging the bones individually, each piece is identified.
After a stop to see a small petroglyph site we were back on
the road and headed south again. With Capitol
Reef park next in our sites, we had a few miles (and hills/mountains!) to
travel before days end. We made it to
Ferron, UT almost in the exact center of the state. We found a campsite at a big reservoir
surrounded by gorgeous cliffs and buttes and a rainbow just for good measure.
For as hesitant as I was about the whole concept of this
trip, it is turning out to be a journey hard to be beat!
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