September 18
Another nice morning! I took a little stroll along the Green River before working on a blog update - I think a lot of my frustration could be eased by reducing picture size - I haven't paid attention to that! Late morning, we hit the road again to check out Dinosaur National Monument.
We just stayed in the easy Utah side as a lot of extra driving would be involved to get all the way around the park since no roads go completely through it - still, it was well worth the stop. We strolled through the visitor center, learning a little about the area, had some lunch, then hiked the fossil discovery trail.
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| No fossils, just cool sandstone with swallow nests! |
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| Rock layers! |
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| Ripple marks! |
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| Dinosaur bone! |
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| An even bigger one! |
The trail leads to Carnegie Quarry, a big archeological dig in the early 1900s that produced hundreds of large fossilized dinosaur skeletons, then was further excavated and covered to be shared with the general public - pretty awesome, especially for science dorks!
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| You can touch real dinosaur bones! |
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| Just Wow! |
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| Quarry Exhibit Hall |
After completing the hike back, we continued driving into the park with a stop to see petroglyphs (carved into rock) and pictographs (painted onto rock) left by Native Americans thousands of years ago.
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| Petroglyphs |
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| Pictographs |
Next we hiked the Sounds of Silence Trail, 3+ miles of dry creek bed, ridge top, and slickrock hiking.
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| A dry creek bed, still, healthy cottonwood trees! |
Once that was done, time to find a place to sleep. We ended up with a decent camping spot on BLM land just outside Sunbeam, CO in junipers and sagebrush. Appeared to be used mostly as a hunting camp, but was clean (aside from a lot of bones) and quiet.
Dinner was burritos, followed by more GOT.
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