Dinosaurs

The stunning Red Fleet State Park, near Vernal, Utah

This holiday has allowed Caroline and I to do and see some amazing things. Seeing Sequoia that are over 2000 years old was very cool, as was visiting Yellowstone where we saw Geysers and had a magical moment leaving the National Park. We saw some cars stopped by the side of the road, and we pulled over to see why. There was an enormous male elk in the trees by the side of the road. I was driving so Caroline quickly lowered her passenger window to take a snap when he bolted. We thought we'd scared him until we heard wolves howling in the background. The thrill of just hearing wolves was amazing and something we really weren't expecting.

Caroline touches a 150 million year old Stegosaurus leg bone

Well today things just carried on with amazing happenings. We stopped in the northern Utah town of Vernal overnight which is a gateway to the National Dinosaur Monument. This is a large area of land in southern Wyoming, northern Utah, and western Colorado where amazing dinosaur finds have been unearthed. The main place to go is the Dinosaur Quarry Exhibit Hall which is a building encompassing a massive archaeological site which holds masses of large dinosaur remains. As you walk around you are allowed to touch the dinosaur bones. This is just fantastic, touching the bones of something which lived about 150 million years ago. Just a short hop away, the local historic culture of the Fremont Indians is visible in Petroglyphs that date back 1000 years.

Quarry Exhibit Hall is built over the rock face that encases the dinosaur bones

1000 year old Fremont Indian Petroglyphs

From dinosaur land we headed east into Colorado and went further than we really wanted to which was my mistake as I was navigating. We stopped in a town called Craig (coincidentally, my nephew's name!) where a friendly waitress in a bar helped us to find our way again. We'd gone too far east, and added about 80 miles on to our journey today. Should we perhaps invest in a GPS? Yes, to the disbelief of some we are travelling around with no GPS in a foreign country, and have managed just over 2500 miles getting lost once, and even then we weren't that lost! In fact, getting lost allowed us a friendly chat and the road we took to get back on track was absolutely stunning cutting through the Colorado River valley east of Grand Junction. Our "mistake" turned into a blessing.

Sunset just north of Moab, Utah

The last part of the journey was back into Utah and into the town of Moab. Now Utah has some pretty strict drinking laws, so we were a little surprised to find a microbrewery in Moab, serving excellent beer, and decent food. I had a couple of Scorpion Pale Ales, and they tasted great with a decent strength. We felt a good beer to finish the first week was well deserved. The holiday so far has been unbelievable and tomorrow we head into the Arches National Park which is situated just 5 miles from where we're staying.

A great place for a deserved beer after a week of driving and experiencing some wonderful moments.

Catch Up Time...Not!

Every holiday has high points and low points. We had planned for our high points to coincide with short stop off's at various places along the way. At other times, we are just staying a night somewhere before moving on. The previous 2 days were spent arriving in Jackson Hole, Wyoming then touring around Yellowstone National Park. Today we left Jackson and headed into Utah to a town called Vernal. Yesterday I was completely overloaded with experiences from Yellowstone, many of which I intend to relate in the coming day's blog posts. Today was a transition day as we head towards the landscapes marked by the Colorado River in southern Utah and northern Arizona. However, today turned out to be quite interesting in its own respect.

Tourist shopping in Jackson Hole. This bronze carved chess set costs a mere $12000 US

We spent the morning breakfasting and schmoozing around the shops of Jackson Hole which is a typical tourist trap in the shopping respect. As a town it reminds me somewhat of Queenstown in New Zealand. In the late morning we drove south out of Teton National Park and toward Utah. We were lucky because it was just one road so the navigation wasn't difficult. The road, US-191 is a bizarre mix of landscapes. In the north, the mountain valleys following the Hoback River are absolutely spectacular. Apparently, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said that the Eastern entrance to Yellowstone from Cody, Wyoming was the most beautiful drive in the World. If it's better than the southern road in, then it goes on to my bucket list of things to do in the future, because the southern road, through Jackson, and toward Utah is amazing.

Sculpture at Museum of the Mountain Man

Battle headdress artifact, Museum of the Mountain Man

After leaving the Teton National Park, the landscape changes to a surreal emptiness as it crosses high plains country. Around here we stopped in another tacky sounding museum which turned out to be remarkably good. In the town of Pinedale, Wyoming is the Museum of the Mountain Man which is an educational centre, and repository of artifacts relating to the trail blazers of the American West in the early 1800's. Men like Jedidiah Smith who was the first to cross the Sierra Nevada, and to travel overland into California. A short look in the door turned into about an hour of fascinating discovery for Caroline and I.

We left Pinedale continuing south, and after some more sparse plains, hit the most amazing scenery where Wyoming meets Utah. When you cross the border, along US-191, you are in the middle of Flaming Gorge Park, a stunning rolling countryside with lakes, rivers and mountains of various colours. It is also a natural wildlife area with Antelope, Elk, Mountain Lion, Bobcat, Mustangs running free among many other animals. We saw lots of deer, but not much else on our drive through. The park runs almost into Vernal where we are stopping for the night. Vernal itself is situated on a paleontologists dream, with fossils and dinosaur footprints found near here. Tomorrow, we will be passing a town named Dinosaur!

Sunset over Flaming Gorge where dinosaurs once roamed