Vernal….yes Vernal Utah! Never heard of it, we’ll sit back and let me tell you about our next stop for 2 nights! It’s 86* when we arrived so a quick change….and oh how our feet were happy to see sandals! Ahhh 🌞 Vernal is in northeastern Utah, 178 miles east of Salt Lake and 20 miles from Colorado. The population was 10,400 in 2019. Its known as Dinosaurland! 🦕 🦖 Near by is Dinosaur National Monument and Utah’s Field House of Natural History and State Park Museum. Everything has a dinosaur or two outside it’s building. They mine Phosphate ore here in Vernal and economy is also based on petroleum, natural gas and uintaite/Gilsonite. The town depends on tourism for towns roots in the Old West and ancient dinosaur fossils. For outdoorsman people there’s lots of hiking, fishing fly fishing and hunting as well as rafting the rivers and camping. ***** 🦖 Dinosaur National Monument has one of the Earth’s richest known dinosaur fossil beds! These remains are from the Jurassic period 150 million years ago. During a drought, it is believed many of them died near a river’s edge. When the rains returned, flood waters carried the bones of over 500 dinosaurs, (10 species) to the area. Ancient river sediments, called Morrison sandstone, entombed the bones. It’s believed that minerals saturated the bones and cast them in stone. In 1909 Earl Douglas, of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum, found the fossils after erosion exposed them. We were able to get a reservation to visit the Quarry! 🦴 OMG…. what an amazing site to see! Never imagined to see so many fossils in the mountain side preserved for generations to see! We were awestruck at the wall of dinosaur bones! *********There are 4 entrances to this park, spread out throughout Utah & Colorado. We visited the park on the Utah side on our first day. Did a driving tour to every overlook, trail, saw petroglyphs all the way to the Green River! At the end of split mountain was Josie Morris cabin on 80 acres where she lived for 50 years surviving off the land by herself! Her family had lived in that house since 1870. 🪵 Oh my! **The next day we drove to the Colorado entrance. 🛻 Drove to the end to Harper’s Corner stopping at all the overlooks, seeing 163 miles across the Escalante Valley & mountain range! 🏔 To add to the adventure we took a 26 mile round trip down a steep, rocky trail with switchbacks around every corner (sometimes having to back up if another vehicle was coming the opposite direction, for it was a narrow high clearance, 4WD trail). Drove all the way down to Echo Lake stopping off at all the site-seeing sites! 😎 Echo Lake sits at the heart of Dinosaur National Monument at the bottom of the canyon. The Green River winds around the monolith known as Steamboat Rock. Sheer cliffs rise all around. Just upstream, the wild Yampa River joins the Green River. Here we walked the trail around the river having wild geese in the fields around us. **One of the stops down was to a big gash in the sandstone “Whispering Cave”. This big fissure in the sandstone rock provides a cool and shady spot to crawl into for awhile, but it’s really cold inside! Not sure what critters hang out in there, so we didn’t venture to far back into it. It got very narrow so stopped when our bodies wouldn’t squeeze through anymore! 😂 Next stop was Pool Creek Petroglyphs, These unusual petroglyphs feature dot-pattern designs and are high above the creek along the rock face. 🪨 Came upon the old Chew Family Ranch! House, cabins, outhouse, wagon, and corrals. The complex is listed as a historic district on the National historical places.🐎 ***Exhausted after this full day of adventures in one park but 2 states….we ordered Pizza Hut 🍕 and relaxed back at the camper. Now it is time to pack up, get our heavy winter clothes & jackets out for we’re off to Leadville, Colorado where it’s 🥶❄️ !
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