We left our beautiful lake-front location and headed east towards Colorado. We drove for many miles and hours and I knew that Scott was getting tired and it was time to find a place to stop for the night. It was around 5 PM when we pulled off the highway onto a dirt road that seemed to have no ending.
I couldn’t imagine where we were going to park the trailer for the night since there didn’t seem to be any place that provided shelter from the hot sun. It was a desert in the middle of nowhere. Scott got out of the car to walk up a hill and look around for a spot to settle for the night.
I sat there not truly wanting to stay anywhere around here. It just wasn’t the kind of place that I felt like setting up camp for the night. It actually had a really great bicycle trail, however going for a bike ride was the last thing I felt like doing in this heat. There was no relief from the pounding sun. Anyway, I agreed halfheartedly to set up camp here.
Scott set up our awning with the chairs and headed off on a solo bike ride. I pouted inside for a short while, and then went outside under the awning to meditate and do some yoga. I figured that yoga would put me back in a better frame of mind.
It worked until the darn flies started biting my back. Then I imagined snakes crawling over me as my eyes were closed during meditation. So, I took my practice back inside the sweat box.
It wasn’t long before I was getting bit again. Those rascals sneaked into the trailer. So, I made myself a cold drink and was armed with my ammunition.
Scott returned exhausted and hot. He said it was great trail but way too hot. The next morning was much cooler, and I went out on a short bike ride with him this time. It wasn’t difficult although the trail was very narrow at times. My cough decided to come along for the ride. Call it nerves or call it the desert, my constant hacking took away from the fun of this sport. We returned to the trailer and packed up to leave. If you zoom into the picture below, that brown speck in the background beyond the green sagebrush is our truck and trailer.
The next day we continued to head towards Colorado. There were signs for Dinosaur National Monument as we traveled through Vernal, Utah.
I reluctantly agreed to stop and boy am I glad we did.
We boarded a tour bus that brought us to quarry. I had to run back into the Visitors Center to get a Dinosaur Junior Ranger Book so I could follow along like the kids who sat in front of us.
The Quarry was truly fascinating! I was never really big on fossils and dinosaurs, but it was so cool to see them intact, albeit preserved, but not haven been removed from where they originally decayed over millions of years. It’s so crazy! The Museum of Natural History in NYC is the only place that I have ever seen dinosaur fossils, and this quarry in Utah is a completely different experience. Everyone should make the trip. Here are a few pictures that blew my mind.
This is a cute picture of Scott admiring a display of an Allosaurus, a carnivorous theropod dinosaur that lived 155 to 150 million years ago! The name Allosaurus means different lizard alluding to its unique concave vertebrae.
I liked the cool display of a young Stegosaurus.
We left the Quarry and took a walk around the hot trail outside.
We saw strange-looking plants.
We also saw a lonely lizard.
There were more preserved fossils still embedded in the rock.
Here are two close ups of what Scott is looking at. The white arrow points to the fossils.
If you find yourself in north eastern Utah, The Dinosaur National Monument is a must see.
