Flaming Gorge, Dinosaur National Monument, Colorado National Monument
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The morning brought good news and bad news. The good news was, it did not rain. In fact, the sky was clear. The bad news was, it was freaking cold out! There was frost on the tent! And with many layers of clothing, hot chocolate, and a sagebrush fire, I was still cold. The coldest morning so far without a doubt.
But, it warmed up relatively quickly. We were able to dry the tent and rain fly in the sun. It cost us about half an hour of driving time which wasn’t good because this was a driving day. We were trying to get to Arches National Park in southern Utah and at the moment we were in southern Wyoming.
As we were driving out, we once again noticed the large burrow in the ground near the truck. It was either the world’s largest gopher or some larger life form was living there. Whatever it was it hadn’t bothered us, thank goodness. Pronghorn antelope were grazing in the closed off part of the campsite. We said good-bye to them as we drove out.
We continued south along Flaming Gorge. We didn’t really expect much better than we had gotten the night before. Along the way were a series of dirt roads (well, tire tracks mostly) heading off towards the gorge. Since we hadn’t seen it really yet, we decided to head out one of them. After all, we had four wheel drive. We’d seen the commercials. They drive these things up cliff faces for chrissake.
The “road” we chose ran along a natural gas pipeline. At least at first. It was relatively flat, with occasional muddy areas where I lost all control of the steering. Pretty cool. It’s a unique experience turning the wheel of a vehicle as you move forward and having no affect whatsoever on the direction you’re going. Luckily, in the middle of a sagebrush prairie, there’s really nothing to hit.
The road forked. One side headed pretty much straight up a hill at about 45 degrees. The other, was a little flatter so we took that. It left the pipeline and headed down a fence line. It started looking less and less like a road and after about 5 more minutes, pretty much stopped. From there we had a pretty good view of the gorge, or at least the lake. We took a few pictures and headed back.
Of course we ended up at the top of the 45 degree hill. The tracks pretty much just disappeared over the edge. I couldn’t see them at all. But, undaunted we continued forward. We put the truck in low gear and headed over the edge. Sitting up as far as I could in the driver’s seat I still couldn’t see the “road”. It takes a certain element of faith to continue forward in a situation like that. Riding the brake we didn’t actually go too fast and at one point I was actually able to stop the truck long enough for Les to take a picture. Then we slimed our way back through the mud to the road. We added an excellent amount of new mud to the truck, increasing its rugged appearance. Although for the next mile or so, we were throwing mud clods all over the place.
At the lower end of the gorge we turned off to see the dam. This is one of about 20 (or more) dams that affect the water running into the Colorado River. It’s a big mother. Tall anyway. I’d say it’s at least 500 feet. At this end of the gorge you start to see why they called it Flaming Gorge. The rock is very red. And as we headed away from it into the mountains towards Utah the rock formations continued to get more interesting and dramatic.
The pass was over 8000 feet and crawling with deer hunters. Lots of guys in pickup trucks and day-glo orange vests and hats. Then down the other side to the wonderful town of Vernal. Vernal is the gateway to dinosaur country and they make the most of it. There are dinosaurs everywhere, including the bright pink one at the Dinoville motel. Vernal seems to be suffering from a limited gene pool. That may not actually be the case, it might just have been our environment. We were hanging around the laundromat (socks and underwear had gone critical) and the under a dollar store so it’s possible we got the wrong impression.
We also picked up gas and groceries in Vernal and all told, wasted a couple of hours there. Followed by heading west instead of east on Hwy 40 for 14 miles until we realized it, for a grand total of about 3 hours. As it turned out, this benefited us in the end, but that story comes later.
From Vernal we headed for Colorado. But after about 10 miles we hit the Dinosaur National Monument, which we almost skipped because of time but I’m glad we didn’t. Dinosaur is an area rich with fossils (otherwise they would have called it Middle-of-Nowhere-ville) and apparently, although we didn’t have time to see them, beautiful river canyons. But, at the visitor’s center, they have enclosed a small cliff face, part of a much larger excavation, where they have exposed a whole slew of dinosaur bones. They were everywhere, piled on top of each other. They had pulled whole dinosaurs out of the hill previously.
The exhibits showed various bones, including the femur of the relative of a brontosaurus that was easily 5 feet tall. This is just the thigh bone! It was too bad we didn’t have longer to spend there but time was a-wasting and off we headed into Colorado. On the way out, we saw a field filled with cranes. They made a really interesting noise, kind of like frogs almost. Sort of a throaty warble. We also read about someone named Escalante, a Spanish priest who had been traveling through the area from New Mexico looking for a faster way to Monterey, CA. This was in 1776. In fact, this was the first indication that anything had happened anywhere we had been before about 1850. We decided he was pretty seriously confused if he expected to get to California from there.
From Dinosaur we headed to Colorado Hwy 139 by way of Rangely, home of Chevron and Conoco, proudly extracting oil from the prairie to serve mankind. For some reason that we couldn’t explain, there were wind socks everywhere as we traveled through the oil fields.
Hwy 138 is a long straight black strip on the map connecting northern Colorado with Interstate 70. Its 73 miles long. It looked like it would be long and straight and uninteresting. It turned out to be twisty and turny and very scenic. The old Rand McNally people seem to take a certain amount of liberties with the smaller roads on the map. This was not the first time (nor the last time) we would experience this. The road traveled along a valley floor where in half an hour we saw 20 cars and two houses. We stopped at an historic marker which turned out to be our friend Escalate again who had discovered Indian petroglyphs on the nearby rocks. We went up and looked at them. I had never seen them in real life before. One was of the “humped-back flute player common to ancient Indians of the area”. We don’t know who this guy was or why he was so popular, but there you are.
The road then pretty much climbed straight up to Douglas Pass at about 8200 feet, then dove back down to the mesa country on the other side through a series of about 10-15 mile per hour switchbacks. We passed through a series of mesas into the valley of the Colorado River near Grand Junction.
This is where the time in Vernal came in handy. It was getting to be about 6 o’clock. Time for finding a campsite. We were about 5 miles from the Colorado National Monument where they had one, and about 60 miles from Arches National Park where we were headed (and didn’t have one, as it turned out). We decided we’d check out the National Monument and head for Arches in the morning. Turned out to be a good call. The Colorado National Monument is a ridge of red rock cliffs that have been carved up by wind (and rain if there ever is any around here) erosion. The road winds up the cliff faces, including boring through them a couple of times. There were spires, and balancing rocks and sheer cliffs, and all kinds of stuff and we hadn’t even taken the rim road yet.
We found the campsite, staked out a good spot and tried to hammer in the tent stakes. 3 inches of soil, then good old solid red rock. Hopefully, there won’t be much wind or we’re in trouble. The sky is very clear and we’re hoping to see some stars again. We haven’t seen any since Flathead Lake in Montana. It seems much warmer than where we’ve been lately but it’s starting to cool off. Hopefully, it won’t be freezing again in the morning. But, I’m not taking any chances and I’ve got all my warm clothes in the tent.
Dinner is potatoes and kielbasa, made once again by our excellent cook. He is excellent for two reasons. One, the food is good, and two, it is not me cooking it.
Oh and a side note. The Guinness book of world records camper is here nearby. This sucker is easily 35 feet long if not longer. I counted off 13 paces of mine from end to end. It’s also probably 15 feet tall or taller. On top of that, it’s dragging a jeep behind it. What a monster. Of course it’s called American Dream. Why not just put your house on wheels?
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