Vernal, Utah and Dinosaur National Monument
On Saturday, June 19, 2021, we left Grand Junction and drove north on the Dinosaur Diamond Prehistoric Highway over Douglas Pass to the town of Dinosaur, whose primary business seemed to be marijuana dispensaries.
From there we entered the Dinosaur National Monument. The Monument has two main areas, one in Colorado called Canyon and the portion in Utah which has rock art and fossils. We stopped first at the Canyon Visitor Center. We then headed up through the Canyon portion of the park towards Harper’s Corner. We stopped at several overlooks, and took short walks at Plug Hat Butte and Canyon Overlook. The overlook at Echo Park, near the end of the road, was spectacular. That’s the Green River in the distance. We ate our lunch at the small picnic area there.
This is
the view
from Echo
Park Overlook.
This illustrates why the Colorad part of the Monument is called “Canyon.”
Afterwards, we drove about 45 minutes to the Quarry Visitor’s Center in Utah, which was rare in that the visitor center exhibits were open. Must have something to do with not wanting visitors standing about in the heat. From there, we took a mandatory shuttle to the Exhibit Hall and saw an amazing wall of dinosaur bones. The fossils were first discovered in the early 20th Century, and the Monument was formed in 1915 to protect them. They stopped excavating when they unearthed 1,500 fossils, and believe there are many times that left undiscovered. An exhibit hall was first constructed in the 1950’s, and was closed to be reconstructed early this century, reopening in 2011.
The first photo is a small section of the wall of bones which fills the entire wall on the right side of the exhibit hall, floor to ceiling.
After viewing the fossils, we drove about a half hour to the town of Vernal, Utah, where we spent the next two nights.
On Sunday, June 20, 2021, we returned to the Dinosaur National Monument Quarry area and took a tour of the Tilted Rocks Drive to the Josie Morris Cabin. There were a few sets of petroglyphs and interesting rock formations along the way.
The petroglyphs date from the Fremont period, ranging in age from 1,000-2,000 years ago. We will see more petroglyphs later. We learned that petroglyphs are carved or chipped into rocks, whereas painted rock art is called a pictograph.
Along the drive we got great views of “Turtle Rock” as well as the Green River and Split Mountain. At the end of the road, we visited the Josie Morris Cabin. Josie was an amazing person, read about her life here.
After that, we took a walk on the shady Hog Canyon Trail. It was hard to photograph due to the contrast between the deep shady canyon and the bright sun on the peaks above.
The Green River and Split Mountain
We returned to Vernal for lunch and then took the unpaved Island Park Road about 12 miles to McKee Springs Petroglyphs. These are spectacular, and despite the temperature being 95F or higher, we walked up to the cliff to get a closer view. There were about six panels, including an unmarked one our friends found. There were no other tourists at the site. This is a rarely visited highlight of a gem of a park.
The map below shows the various places we visited in Dinosaur National Monument over two days.
We all agreed, Dinosaur National Monument is fantastic, and Vernal offers an extraordinary array of sights and activities; we barely scratched the surface. Tomorrow, we start our journey north towards Glacier National Park.
