May 24-25, 2024
Written By: J.Couch
We were heading out of Denver on our move to Seattle. We decided to head to the north side of the state and drive through Dinosaur National Monument on our way out of Colorado. After about a five-hour drive from Denver we arrived at the east side of the park and stopped at Canyon Visitor Center. They had just opened for the season the day before so it was really quiet there. We got there in the late afternoon so they were getting close to closing for the evening, they close at 5:00pm.
There is a small gift shop and the short movie about the park if you have about 15 minutes to sit and watch. We didn’t watch the movie since we wanted to drive up into the park before it got too late. The east side of the park is free to get in, so you don’t have to pay to get in, but there is no connection to the west side of the park from there. The drive all the way to the end of this east side, I was told, takes about 45 minutes if you don’t stop at any of the pull outs. Longer depending on how many times you stop and how long you stay to enjoy the views.
We didn’t have that much time so we just drove up to the first couple stops and turned around at the Escalante Overlook. We would have liked to drive farther into the park and see the steamboat rock at the end, but we just didn’t have that much time left in the day. If you are coming from Denver you would want to leave early to give yourself more time in the afternoon before staying in the area.
We left the park and headed to Vernal Utah to find a place to stay for the night. There is a small town of Dinosaur Colorado along the way, there was not a lot there and I would recommend going on to Vernal which is about 20 to 30 minutes away. There are a lot more restaurants and hotels to offer there. I would also recommend getting a place ahead of time, or at least check to make sure that there is nothing going on around the time that you are there. We were going open ended and found that school graduation was causing a lot of hotels to be sold out. We finally found a place to stay, but paying a lot more than we had planned.
We got up early the next morning to go into the west side of the park, the Quarry Visitor Center. Arriving just after they opened was a good choice since it was kind of quiet and not a lot of people yet. This side of the park is where most people go, this is where you see all the dinosaur bones. It costs $25 to get into the park, unless you have an annual pass or one of the other passes. It’s only about a 20-minute drive back into the park from Vernal so it’s pretty close.
We started at the visitor center which has a gift shop. Out in the back there is a shuttle stop where you can catch a free ride up to the Quarry Exhibit Hall, where you can see all the dinosaur bones. There is also a trail that’s about 1.25 miles and all uphill from the visitor center. We opted to take the shuttle up and hike back down, it was much easier. It had been raining so it was a little muddy, so make sure you have good shoes if you want to hike. We got to the Quarry Exhibit Hall after a short ride up the hill, and a short narrative of the history of the area by the driver. It’s a very short ride, maybe 5 minutes if that. At one point, millions of years ago this whole area was a river. Over millions of years, the whole area has been raised almost vertical. The Exhibit Hall is built along this vertical wall. It is designed to allow you to see the bones from an upper level and then walk down to the lower level to see them up close. At one point on the lower level, we were able to touch the bones that are encased in the rock. It’s amazing to see all the bones in this location, they say that there are over 1,500 dinosaur fossils exposed here.
After spending about 20 minutes here we took the trail back down to the visitor center. This is all downhill from here. Along the trail there are short offshoots that have other viewing areas where you can see more bones. Down towards the bottom of the trail before it heads back to the visitor center there is a big rock with petroglyphs that were created by native Americans years ago. We headed back to the visitor center just as it was starting to rain. We made it back just in time, before getting too wet.
From there we drove down the road to the Swelter Shelter Petroglyphs. These were very interesting to see, there were a lot of them here and a lot looked very evil, with horns and long claw-like hands. Some of them even looked alien-like too.
We drove down to the end where there are two campgrounds and looked at the Split Mountain area. This is where the Green River has carved its way through the mountains. The way the clouds were getting caught in the mountains with the slight rain made for some good pictures.
It was starting to rain a lot harder now so we decided that we would move on and start heading towards Salt Lake. It would have been nice to spend a little more time here exploring, and if the weather would have been a little better, we would have. It was great to be able to see what we did at this National Monument as we were leaving the state. Now off towards Seattle.
Thanks for wandering with us,
The Wandering Couchs
