When camping is Dino-mite

As if our two boys weren’t enough raucous fun, when the McBrayers join up with the Palmers, our number of boys triples. Which is pretty much heaven no matter which family you are part of!

Our friends invited us to join them up at Dinosaur National Monument a few weekends ago. If Durango is the very southwest corner of Colorado, then Dinosaur is the very northwest corner. Although most of the monument is in Colorado, the access to the park, campgrounds, visitors center and the most unique part, the bone quarry, is located just across the boarder in Utah.

After 4 mountain passes through the beautiful San Juan Mountains and a long 6+ hour drive, we arrived to a giant sliver of a moon in the orange sky sandwiched between dark thunder clouds and silhouette of strange rock formations. It was a scene that resembled what you might expect at sunset on the far away planet of Tatoine if only there were multiple moons in view. We took our time on our drive stopping to take pictures of the bighorn sheep outside of Ouray, eating at a fancy little foodie place in Grand Junction and strolling down their main street in search of ice cream. We set up out tent in the sprinkling rain around 10 pm and hit the hay for the following day of exploration and bone hunting.

Dinosaur National Monument is a really interesting place. It’s one of the most concentrated locations of full dino skeletons in the US, perhaps the world. They think that there was a prehistoric river that washed a huge cache of bones into one location and then fossilized. When the cache was found, there were actual dinosaur bones sticking out of the ground into the air completely exposed and obvious. A trench was dug and many fossils with full skeletons in tack including the skulls, which is actually quite rare, were found. Many of the skeletons from this quarry can be found in museums all over the world. There is a visitors center built right over the quarry that gives you two story access to see how many bones remain, allowing to you to imagine just how many were uncovered as well as many cast replicas of the skeletons that were removed from the site. Know what a giant sauropod is? Yeah, over 100 feet long, so some of them were that huge and found here fully in tact. Pretty dang cool.

The campground is located on the Green river with the confluence of Yampa river east of there on the Colorado side of the park. It’s a popular rafting destination for those that like to float and enjoy the rush of white water. All 6 boys earned their Dinosaur Junior Ranger badges at the visitors center. We took some time visiting two box canyons that made up an old homestead ranch as well as a few hikes that took us on a varied trail up desert dry washes, over slickrock and through sandy gullies. It’s really hard to explain. Just go there. It’s easier than me trying to explain the strange terrain of Utah. The makers of movies like Star Wars, no doubt visited Utah for ideas.

Justin and I celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary looking at dinosaur bones and camping in the dessert. I could have never told you 18 years ago that there’s no place I’d rather be on my 18th than right where we are.