Martin

Grand Canyon National Park

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We visited Grand Canyon National Park in early April 2023, while staying at the Grand Canyon Railway RV Park in Williams, Arizona.  We traveled to the Grand Canyon via the Grand Canyon Railway leaving from Williams in the morning and returning the same evening. The trip was just over 2-hours each way and included some fun entertainment and a knowledgeable tour guide in each carriage. For more on our train trip adventure please take a look at this post.

It was a sunny but chilly day with snow still on the ground at the canyon rim. The train dropped us off at the historic Grand Canyon Depot which was a short walk to the South Rim visitor center and historic El Tovar Hotel. Our train schedule gave us 3-hours at the canyon rim, and we enjoyed a leisurely stroll and picnic lunch along the rim trail which afforded spectacular views into the Grand Canyon. We walked along to the Bright Angel Trail head and walked a few hundred yards along the trail that goes down into the canyon. The sheer scale of the Grand Canyon is difficult for the brain and eye to comprehend, and it is truly one of the most awe-inspiring natural wonders of the US National Park system.

Photos of our visit are provided below. Click on the thumbnails to view the photos.

 

Dinosaur National Monument

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Who doesn’t like dinosaurs!

We visited the Dinosaur National Monument in June 2023 and then again in June 2024 while staying at the Fossil Valley RV Park in the nearby town of Vernal, Utah.

The park includes a range of scenery, with mountains, deserts, rivers, and canyons all visible or accessible from the park roads. There are Petroglyphs that reveal the lives and connections of Indigenous people to this land. There are also remains of cabins and farming installations that date from the late 19th and early 20th century homesteaders and outlaws that found refuge here.

The park has two visitor centers. During our visits, we started at the Quarry Visitor Center near Jensen, Utah, at the southwest corner of the park. The second visitor center, the Canyon Visitor Center, is in Dinosaur, Colorado.

The highlight of our first visit was the Quarry Exhibit Hall, a separate building near the Quarry Visitor Center that allows visitors to view the wall of approximately 1,500 dinosaur bones in a large, well-lit building with supporting exhibits and informational displays. Here, you can gaze upon the remains of numerous species of dinosaurs from the Late Jurassic period, including Allosaurus, Apatosaurus, Camarasaurus, Diplodocus, and Stegosaurus, among others.

After we visited the Quarry Exhibit Hall, we drove the 10-mile paved Tour of Tilted Rocks, which included sweeping geology, historic homesteads, petroglyphs and pictographs, hiking trails, campgrounds, and scenic vistas. This road ends at the Josie Bassett Morris cabin built in 1913. When we returned for our second visit in June 2024, we spent half a day at the Josie Morris cabin site and took the two short canyon hikes nearby. Allen was fascinated by the history and legends surrounding Josie Morris, and you can read his post about our visit to her cabin and the surrounding area here.

Photos of our visits are provided below. Click on the thumbnails to view the photos.

Colorado National Monument

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We visited the Colorado National Monument on an extremely hot day in June 2024. We were staying at the Riverbend RV Park & Cabins on the edge of Montrose, about one-and-a-half hours away from the park. On the way to the park we stopped for lunch at Trail Life Brewing in the historic downtown district in the town of Grand Junction. We continued on for about half-an-hour to the northern entrance of the park near the town of Fruita, and stopped at the Saddlehorn Visitor Center to learn about the park and its history.

The main road through the park is Rimrock Drive which runs some 22.5 miles from the northern entrance near Fruita to the southern entrance near Grand Junction. This is a spectacular winding mountain road with many overlooks. We appreciated that we could see so much of the park from the overlooks just off the road as it was really too hot to do much hiking that day.

We were only able to drive about half-way along Rimrock Drive due to a road closure for road repairs, however we enjoyed many beautiful scenic views from the overlooks along that section.

Rimrock Drive has an interesting history. Sections of the road date back to an original rough-cut automobile road through the monument, eventually known as Serpents Trail, that was built between 1912 and 1921. After the establishment of the Colorado National Monument, the “new road” that eventually became the current Rimrock Drive was built between 1933 and 1950, primarily by the Civilian Conservation Corps. The extended construction period was due in part to a break in all work between 1942 and 1949 due to the second world war. Upon completion of the new road, the original Serpents Trail made into a hiking trail.

Photos of our visit are provided below. Click on the thumbnails to view the photos.

Capitol Reef National Park

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We visited Capitol Reef National Park in September 2023. The visitor center is located on Hwy-24 near the town of Torrey, Utah. We were staying about an hour away at the Venture RV Park in Richfield, Utah.

The park itself is very large, but most of it is accessible only via non-paved roads and backcountry hiking and camping. We visited the Fruita area of the park which is the corridor along Hwy-24 that mostly follows the path of the Fremont River. The Fruita district was settled in the late 19th century with historic fruit orchards lining the road. The orchards are managed by the National Park Service and are still quite productive. Pick-your-own fruit is available seasonally from the orchards. Fruits include apricots, peaches, apples, pears, plums, cherries, walnuts, almonds, and quinces.

The main visitor center is in the middle of the Fruita district, and from there we took the dogs on the short walk to the nearby Mott Orchard. We then drove a short distance to the dog-friendly Doc Ingelsby picnic area which was a nice shady park-like setting along Sulphur Creek. On the drive out we enjoyed the canyon scenery along Hwy-24 and stopped at a number of viewpoints along the way.

Photos of our visit are provided below. Click on the thumbnails to view the photos.

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