We woke up here. It wasn’t the worst place to camp for the night. I could give that honor to several other campsites we’ve slept at in our travels. Sleeping in the Durango wasn’t exactly stellar, but we managed to sleep in until 8:30am. The view in front of us might not look like much, but the view behind us was gorgeous!
Day 10
Saturday, June 8, 2019
Dinosaur National Monument
At least we had a break from setting up and tearing down the tent, so all we had to do was remove our makeshift window coverings and drive away. I could see how that might be appealing to some, to just camp in their vehicle, but I’ll take the fresh air of the tent and the ability to stretch out after a long day of driving any day!
Our first stop was the campground, since the camp host said we could come back and use its’ facilities in the morning. We washed up, got dressed for the day, and found ourselves some breakfast in the depths of the almost empty cooler.
We also decided to check out the nearby Split Mountain Group Campground on our way by. If it hadn’t been occupied the night before, the camp host had said he could’ve sent us there instead of the dispersed site. The drive down had some nice views of the Green River.
We picked up Junior Ranger books in the visitor center and then got in line for the shuttle to take us to the Quarry Exhibit Hall. Our ride was short. When we arrived, a ranger talk was about to begin, so we joined the group waiting for that. It was a talk that was meant more for the bazillion preschool and elementary school kids who were all sitting on the floor around the park ranger. Not exactly our cup of tea, but it fulfilled the ranger talk requirement in the junior ranger booklets.
Quarry Exhibit Hall
The exhibit hall was built around an area of about 1500 exposed dinosaur bone fossils. At one time, there had been far more fossils, but many of them had been excavated and shipped off to museums around the country before anyone thought to preserve what was left for others to enjoy.
The dinosaur bones in the quarry are from the Late Jurassic Period. They are approximately 150 million years old, which is such an incomprehensible amount of time. You could see the bones of eight different species of dinosaurs! It was kind of mind-boggling to think that dinosaurs had actually walked where we were standing.
None of us are really into dinosaurs, but we enjoyed looking at all of the bones in the wall. One could stare at the texture of it all day and not see everything.
After we arrived back at the visitor center, the kids completed their Junior Ranger books and did the pledge with the ranger. We asked about visiting the other part of the park in Colorado and they sounded like it was worth a visit, so since we had nothing planned for the day, and it was only a thirty mile drive, we went to check it out.
Welcome to Colorful Colorado
We hadn’t ever been through the far northwest corner of Colorado, but it’s not the most exciting corner of the state…definitely not as colorful as the sign would like you to believe. The first town after the border, was covered in weed store signs, so maybe that’s what they mean by colorful? Ha!
The national park wasn’t too far beyond the border, and for some reason, they had their entrance sign out along the highway, rather than on the road into the park. We stopped at the Canyon Visitor Center to look around. It’s a very tiny visitor center, so our look around was quick and then we started the drive to the main part of the park.
Back to Utah
We didn’t drive very far when I wondered if we’d ever see anything interesting. Most of the drive is technically in the national monument because the road is within a little strip of national monument land, but beyond the right of way, is not the actual park. One has to drive 31 miles to get to the actual park, which meant that it would be a 62 mile round trip.
We decided that it was going to take too long to drive that far for a viewpoint and then drive back out again, so we turned around. I’d like to go back and try it again someday, perhaps at the beginning of a road trip, because I think we were probably just too wore out on scenery by that point in the trip. Photos I’ve found online of the end viewpoint look pretty spectacular! Our whole Dinosaur National Monument visit could use a do-over with some hiking and the parts we skipped. This whole area is very underrated for how beautiful it is!
I had considered going home through Colorado since we were headed that way already, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to go back through Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area instead. There was a campground that had been on my list of places to camp and I wanted to check it out. The drive back toward Utah was gorgeous with the mix of scenery and blue skies with little wispy clouds.
We stopped at the Musket Shot Springs Scenic Overlook on our way back. This location is one of many that are on the route of a couple of Spanish monks who were leading an expedition of ten men toward the Spanish missions in California in 1776. This location is where they killed a bison and spent a day preparing the meat for their travels. I can’t imagine having to stop and kill a bison for food while on a road trip. Then again, they didn’t have roads, and might have just been pushing or pulling hand carts back then. It’s always crazy to think of the progress that has been made in the last 250 years!
Flaming Gorge
We checked out the Flaming Gorge Dam Visitor Center to see if they offered tours or a junior ranger program. They did offer tours, but none that worked for us. They did not have a junior ranger program. Since there was not much to do at the visitor center, we continued on to search for a campsite…well before sunset this time!
Firehole Canyon Campground
I had known about Firehole Canyon Campground for a while and wanted to camp there, but it had never quite worked out with any of our previous trips through Utah…until now.
Once we found the campground, we drove around several times looking at the various open campsite options. It was tough to tell which ones would fit our big tent with all of the sagebrush everywhere. We happened to spot the campground host, so I mentioned our trouble in finding a site to him and he said he’d help us find a good spot. He showed us where the tents could go on a few sites, tucked into the sagebrush, and we chose the one he said his wife liked the best, site 21. It was a stunning site, tucked down below a hill, with views of the formations across the water.
It was super windy as we started setting up the tent. Fa, our camp host seemed to want to help us set up, but after setting up our tent night after night on a long trip, we tend to have a system of doing things that works for the three of us. He told us the tent from the night before had blown away, so he offered other stakes. We had been through wind before, so I wanted to use our own stakes. We ended up using all of the guy lines and despite having plastic gizmos that tightened them for us, Fa wanted to show us how to tie truckers hitch knots in the lines instead. I humored him since he really seemed to want to help us not blow away, but the plastic gizmos actually work well at keeping the line tight.
I don’t remember what we ate for supper that night, but whatever it was, we sat in the truck to eat it because it was so windy outside. Our entertainment was watching the tent billowing in the wind. The rainfly would puff up like it was going to take off. I really wondered how our night would be if we had this much wind already. Luckily, the wind died down a little while later, after the sun had set. We should’ve just waited to set up the tent at our normal after-dark time! Ha!
This campsite was so beautiful that I kept taking photos of the tent in different light. The evening turned out to be a lovely calm evening, so we decided to do some night photography. I love this photo with Joey giving a “thumb’s up” from inside the tent!
This might possibly be one of my most favorite campsites ever. We had so many beautiful campsites on this trip, but this one seemed a little more special. Perhaps it was because we had such a gracious and welcoming camp host to help us find the perfect campsite. Maybe it was the unique landscape…or perhaps it was the smell of sagebrush surrounding our tent…or all of the above.
Fa had warned us that it might get cold overnight, so when we took our stuff to the tent, we brought along the wool blanket that usually covers our now empty cooler bag. We bundled up for a chilly night and went to sleep. It had been a nice, leisurely day checking out both sides of Dinosaur National Monument.
We’ve got two more days left of this trip so be sure to subscribe to find out where we stop on our way home!