Dinosaur and Flaming Gorge

Upon arrival at Dinosaur National Monument we first snagged a campsite at the Green River Campground that overlooked the river. It seemed like prime real estate and we then headed back to the visitor center to see the quarry exhibit hall. We last visited this park in July 2010 but the quarry building was under construction and we didn't get to experience much of the dinosaur part of Dinosaur National Monument.

Not so this time, the building was ready for exploration and the uplifted fossils were amazing to see. The wall was once a dried river bed that contained many dinosaur corpses and the bones were a jumbled mess. We tried to make sense of which bones belonged to which dinosaur - I particularly enjoyed the tailbones of the diplodocus. Lisa found a kindred spirit in the camarasaurus as she snapped lots of pictures.

We hiked the short fossil discovery trail back to the visitor center and enjoyed the exhibits in the museum before returning to our campsite. It turned out that the real estate wasn't so prime after all, we were swarmed by mosquitos and black flies when we were in any shade. Luckily we could stay away from the bugs if we stood directly in the sun....in the desert...in 95 degree weather....oy.

We donned our long sleeves and sun hats and sat in the sun by the river for much of the afternoon until a crayfish crawled across Lisa's foot. We then went to Josie's cabin at the end of the road to explore a settler's cabin and box canyon (where she kept her sheep). Sadly the bugs were still swarming there, so we went back to our site, cooked some supper and hid in the tent for the rest of the evening.

In the morning, we threw gear in the car and went to Vernal, Utah where we checked surrounding weather and park reservations. We decided to start heading north and our first stop was at Redfleet State Park. We intended to rent kayaks because of Lisa's fond memory of paddling past fossilized dinosaur footprints! Unfortunately there seemed to be no staff at this park at all. We couldn't even find anyone to take our day-use fee.

Instead we continued north and found kayaks to rent at a marina in Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area. The flooded area of the Green River made for some picturesque kayaking as we paddled among the red sandstone cliffs. We stopped for a picnic at a sand beach and explored the dam area and the narrow area to the west. It was great to be on the water - even on a giant self-bailing raft thing...

We then started driving north through some of the most diverse landscape that we have experienced. Our path took us through Rock Springs, Wyoming where we found a great dinner at Fiesta Guadalajara. We continued north through prairie then the Wyoming Badlands, crossing the continental divide on the Oregon Trail Auto Route. The Wind River Range was prominent to our left for most of the drive and we landed in Lander, Wyoming for the evening. A solid job of work.