Dinosaur National Monument, May 4-6, 2016

We continued to travel on highway 14 from Walden where it intersects with Highway 40 and then  followed Highway 40 to  Steamboat Springs. My goodness, Steamboat Springs is a mini Vale and lots of traffic so we continued on and our final stop which  was Dinosaur National Monument.

What a pleasant surprise this place is.  It is really diverse and not just dinosaur stuff.  There are several entrances to the monument and it meanders it way  through Utah and Colorado.  Two days was not enough time to explore everything, but we crammed as much as we could in two days.

Spit Mountain. The Green River splits the mountain, rather than going around it.

The Green River runs through the monument and the only campground that was open sits within a stones throw of the river. If you look closely, you can see the trailer.

The Dinosaur Quarry is the highlight of the park and the only place to see dinosaur fossils.  Earl Douglass discovered the dinosaur quarry in 1909. A quarry was set up in 1915 to protect the fossils and later expanded. The "bone wall" contains thousands of fossils in relief.

Wow, that is a huge bone.

After exploring the dinosaur quarry we drove the Harpers Corner Auto Tour which provided vast vistas of canyons and mountains.

Echo Park is another interesting segment of the monument.  The dirt road takes off from Harpers Corner is winding and steep in places. It terminates at Echo Park and the confluence of the Green River and Yampa River.  You can see a tiny section of the road in the middle of the pictures near the river.

More Echo Park Road

Lots of interesting rock formations

The Chew Ranch.  The Chews were one of the original homesteaders in the area.  Mr. Chew eventually sold his ranch to the Park Service.

A prototype of an Airstream?

 Including built-ins:

 The monument also contains many petroglyphs.  This one was made by the Fremont Indians.  Most of the petroglyph sites are not listed.  This one is now more than 30 feet off the ground. This is an unusual petroglyph because it is made of dots.  Look towards the left of the photograph.

 One of the high canyon walls on the way to Echo Park.

 The entrance to Echo Park

 The confluence of the Green River and Yampa River.

This heard of deer  were pretty curious.

Another auto tour was the Tilted Rock Auto Tour.  The drive follows the river.

 Titled rocks.

 The Tilted Rock Tour ends at the Josie Morris homestead.  Josie Morris was a very independent woman who built her cabin and lived without the accoutrements of the 20th century.  She lived on her homestead until the age of 89 doing all of the work required by herself.

 A few steps away from the homestead was this box canyon.

This is one of those places you want to spend more than a couple of days if you are into exploring and hiking.  It is under utilized and as I said before I was really pleasantly surprised because I expected so much less.