Down the Dusty road: Park City to Vernal

Saturday 6/21 we pulled into Park City RV Resort, one of our favorites. It’s easy access from the freeway and close to Rob’s sister’s house.

We had a very nice visit with Laurie and her husband, Ken and also managed to get in a few hours with niece Courtney. Saturday was a kicked back day after the long drive from Littlefield.

Sunday we ventured downtown to Silly Sunday in Park City. This is a street fair on the main drag with vendors of all sorts, shapes and sizes. Elbow to elbow people, many sporting dogs on leashes. We left Dusty at home with Ken, their dog Joey and Courtney’s dog Roxy. Dusty was in his element. The three dogs played endlessly. By the time we returned from the street fair the dogs couldn’t lift their heads.

Monday we headed east to Vernal, Utah. The drive took us on a beautiful two-lane drive through and over the Uinta Mountains. Once over the mountains the vast Green Valley spread out before us. All along the drive we were passed, in both directions, by tandem tanker trucks hauling oil from Vernal to Salt Lake. We didn’t count them, but I would guess close to 100.

Our destination was the Fossil Valley RV Park, right in town and easy to miss, if you’re not watching carefully. Once in, the park is wide enough to make it easy for this big rig to maneuver. Lots of big trees providing shade but not good for satellite. After hooking up and walking Dusty, we headed east to the Dinosaur National Monument, designated a Nat’l Monument by Woodrow Wilson in 1910.

150 million years ago this area was very different from the arid land it is today. It was flat and semi-arid with rivers running through it. Dinosaurs roamed the area and ruled the world. Dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago. The theory is that the climate changed about 149 million years ago and the rivers dried up. Not having any water, the dinosaurs began dying. When the rains came again the river beds were flooded, drowning remaining dinos and washing everything downstream where a literal logjam occurred. The area was covered in a vast sea and silt was deposited over the area, layer after layer, burying the dinos deep under the earth.

Over geologic time, the Rocky Mountains were born and the area experienced uplifting of the layers, many of which are exposed tilted. There are 23 geologic formations exposed, each of which represents extinct ecosystems.

This photo shows the tilted layers of rock.

In 1909, Earl Douglass, a paleontologist working for the Carnegie Museum in Pennsylvania discovered eight tail vertebrae of an Apatosaurus, a particularly large dinosaur. His discovery eventually led to the discovery of remains of ten different species of dinosaurs.

So many great specimens were taken out of the area, the decision was made to stop and create a museum highlighting the fossils as they existed when discovered. The Quarry museum houses a rock façade two stories high on which thousands of fossils are partially exposed. An amazing display!