September 2, 2003—Among the giants and the humble

We like hitting the sightseeing trail early in the mornings; there’s much less traffic to deal with on our motorcycles and many times we have things to ourselves, like we found this morning as we drove the one short road within the Utah portion of Dinosaur National Monument. The Passage in Time road eventually turns to red dirt and we came across signs for Indian petroglyphs. It’s so refreshing to find a non-protected (i.e., no fencing or Plexiglas covering) ancient site within our national parks which hasn’t been graffitied to death by vandalism—we were in amazement and wonder.

                                                   Dinosaur Park ride

   Marc at Split Rock boat ramp-Green river

Being a thwarted anthropologist myself (in my secret life), I always stand in awe when I figure I might be in the exact same footsteps as a man may have stood 500 or  a 1000 years ago. I ached to reach out my hand and touch where he had carved, but the park service asks you not to do that as sweat and salts from human hands can ruin what weather has not been able to do all through these eons. We had to be content to photograph and marvel.

                                                 Indian petroglyphs

Continuing on to road’s end we began to see a veritable oasis in this land of dry red stone. We were at pioneer Josie Bassett’s homestead, where in 1914 she carved a rugged life for herself as a model of self-sufficiency, using the natural spring gurgling from her property (Cub Creek) to plant crops, fruit trees, and irrigate her pastures. One of the most intriguing parts about visiting Josie’s was her use of the vast box canyon walls directly in front of her place to contain her herd. A hiking trail to the stone-jumbled end is a definite must see as you stand with thousands of feet of towering stone going straight up above your head and imagine the solitude she must have endured here.

                                                                                   Josie's homestead

               Marc in box canyon                                      Back of box canyon

The crème de la crème of this park of course, is the Quarry; that hump of hill where fossilized dinosaur bones had finally made their way to the surface by 1909 from 145 million years earlier . Earl Douglass made his phenomenal find in that year of eight tail bones. Douglass and his compatriots continued digging for the next 15 years, sending bones to museums all over. The WPA even got involved in widening and deepening the cut on the hillside in the 1930’s and the National Park Service took over reopening the Quarry in 1953. It has now been preserved in its arrested state of exposure to offer to the public the fascinating history, story, and details involved in the quarrying of old fossils. Over two thousand bones still remain. Scientific work still continues in the lab, but bones from this Quarry are no longer removed.

                                                       Quarry story

                                      Quarry wall containing 2000 bones

                   Allosaurus story                                                Allosaurus find

As an aside, Dinosaur National Monument on the Utah side (much more of the park continues on the Colorado side) is approximately 20 miles outside of the small town of Vernal. Vernal sits remote on the high eastern plateau, but is filled with quaint shops lining a literal Main Street filled with flower boxes every 100 feet or so, giving this busy hive a welcoming, home town feel. In addition, of note to RVers, is that there is a Super Wal-Mart here!