Dinosaur National Monument has been on our stop list for several trips and has been skipped over for some reason every time.
Despite the baking summer heat, we finally put this as a must-stop for this trip and checked out the Utah side of the Monument.
Most of Dinosaur National Monument is located in Colorado, but the Dinosaur Quarry Exhibit Hall is located in Utah and this is the part that most visitors see.
Based on our limited time, we would venture a guess that most visitors hit the visitors center and the quarry building on their way through to some of the bigger National Parks such as the Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, or Rocky Mountain National Park, and never see anything else within the park.
Which is a shame, because the park is filled with Indian Petroglyphs and amazing views.
The Monument was created in 1915 to protect the Dinosaur Quarry area, then expanded dramatically from 80 acres to over 200,000 acres in 1938.
The Quarry building was closed in 2006 due to structural issues that were causing the building to fall apart. Guess all the geologists were busy looking at fossils instead of looking at the rock they put the building on…
We had originally planned on camping in the Green River Campground within the park, but with 100+ degree temperatures we decided to push on through to a hotel in Grand Junction with good internet, unlimited air conditioning, unlimited hot water, and a chance to cook up a fresh batch of food and do laundry.
It definitely IS nice to be back in Colorado though – it is amazing just how difficult (bordering on impossible) it is to find recycling in Idaho and Utah!
Roll The Bones
Pretty amazing to see detailed vertebrae on this fossil.
Jurassic Park
This looks suspiciously like the Jurassic Park logo to me, although it’s not a T-Rex.
Stacked Petroglyphs
If you run out of horizontal wall space, put up your ladder and go tall.
Waving
I call this "Man Waving To Goat Who Is Balancing On Another Man’s Head While Pooping In A Bucket". Prove me wrong.
In The Heat
We highly recommend not doing these hikes in the middle of summer heat, this was brutal.
More Analysis
Big man about to hug Ewok and monkeys while spaceship blasts past.
Lizard Petroglyph
There are a bunch of lizard petroglyphs at Dinosaur National Monument, and nobody knows what they mean.
Dinosaur National Monument
The mandatory entrance sign photo
