Dinosaur national monument

Finished our delicious bakery items and got back on Hwy. 40. Next stop was the Dinosaur National Monument. I am not a huge fossil and prehistoric study sort of fan, but this was a interesting stop. (Plus it's free with our Golden Access pass)
Nice, but really very small visitor center, because it is all about getting on to the shuttle and heading to the large exhibit building which is very informative. Back in the early 1900's a paleontologist discovered some fossilized dinosaur bones. Turned out the ones he found were the tip of the iceberg. This sandstone formation ended up being home to some ridiculously large number of bones from maybe 200 (?) different dinos. Theory is that many died in this river area from a prolong drought. Just dropped dead in various places in the river. Then there was a huge season of rain with a large floods that literally washed them all down into one low zone and they just piled up. Millions of years of erosion buried them. (Overly simplified explanation!)
The original paleontologist asked that a portion of the dig be left intact for the public to actually see them in place. Hence this really interesting exhibit hall is built over the remaining site. So you get you see the bones as they appeared during the excavation.
We really enjoyed in.
Back out to the parking and there is about a 10 mile drive out to other interesting sites, Green River overlook, several locations with pictograms and petroglyphs (dated way later then the dino thing), and the cabin of a local woman who homesteaded at age 40 and lived off grid for about 50 years, dying in 1964. Gorgeous, very remote site.
Finally left the park after 5 and got an RV site in Vernal, utah for the night, only 20 min down the road.Read more