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Utah
Dinosaur National Monument
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.
Capitol Reef National Park
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.
Arches National Park
We visited Arches National Park in October 2023. The weather was perfect, and we enjoyed our stay in the nearby town of Moab, Utah. During the visit we stayed at the Moab KOA Holiday, just outside the town.
Arches National Park is very easily accessed from Moab, being just a few miles outside of the town. During our visit, the National Park Service was operating a timed entry reservation system to avoid overcrowding in the park. We found the online reservation process relatively easy to navigate and were able to make a reservation the evening before our visit. The park was well attended but certainly not overcrowded during our visit, so it appeared that the timed entry system was achieving the desired result.
We drove the “Main Park Road” through the park, an 18 mile drive that takes in most of the iconic rock formations and arches in the park, some of which are accessed via short trails and others are visible from viewpoints and overlooks. Pictures of the park often show the famous “Delicate Arch” that you may recognize from Utah license plates, however there are also many of other “arch” and “non-arch” rock formations within the park that are equally spectacular and unique. We enjoyed a number of the shorter trails during our visit including the “Garden of Eden” and “The Windows” areas. We also took the short trail to the lower viewing area for Delicate Arch which afforded excellent views of the famous arch without taking the more strenuous trail up to the arch itself.
Below are pictures from our visit to Arches National Park in October 2023. Click on thumbnails below to view pictures.
Josie Bassett Morris & Her Cabin
Dinosaur National Monument, Utah
PLEASE NOTE: This post got the better of me, and I went down a rabbit hole. I still have a minor cleanup, but I wanted to post it as soon as possible. Sorry for the rough draft version, but it’s better than nothing. I hope you find her as interesting as I did. This cabin is one of my favorite places to visit. I find it absolutely beautiful.
Photos By: 365RVLiving.com and courtesy of the J. Willard Marriott Digital Library at the University of Utah (https://collections.lib.utah.edu/)
Josie Morris’ cabin is one of my favorite places I’ve ever visited—so much so that we’ve made the trip out to it from Vernal, Utah, for the second consecutive year. While researching the cabin for this post, I found Josie’s and her family’s story captivating. Their story is truly a fantastic part of the American West. I can easily imagine living there in the late 1800s or early 1900s. I love this small cabin’s mature trees, solitude, and isolation.
Petroglyphs and pictographs on rocks along the road to Josie’s cabin. Source: Allen
It’s several miles down a small county road just off Old Hwy 149 inside Dinosaur National Monument. The last few miles of the road are a well-maintained dirt road, but any car can drive unless it has recently rained. On the way to the cabin, ancient petroglyphs and pictographs were created on nearby walls by the Freemont people living there from around 200 AD to 1300 AD.
There is a small parking lot at the cabin, and two easy hiking trails start there: the Hog Canyon trail and the Box Canyon trail. The Hog Canyon trail is the longer (1.5 miles) and more diverse of the two, while the Box Canyon trail is significantly shorter (0.5 miles) but still beautiful. Please be aware that there is a lot of Poison Ivy along the Hog Canyon trail.
Originally from Arkansas, Herbert and Elizabeth Bassett moved west circa 1877 with their three-year-old daughter, Josie. She and her younger siblings, Samuel Clark Bassett Sr, Ann M (Bassett) Willis, Elbert Bassett, and George Crawford Bassett, grew up in Brown’s Park (originally Brown’s Hole), an isolated mountain valley on the Green River near the Colorado/Wyoming/Utah border known for cattle rustlers, horse thieves, and outlaws.
Due to poor health, Herb, a scholar and musician, could not perform hard labor. Elizabeth, a strong, outdoorsy woman, realized that she needed to provide a living for the family and became a cattle rancher and rustler. She ran the cattle and sheep ranch and raised thoroughbred horses while Herb taught the children.
Elizabeth and Herbert Bassett were comparatively wealthy and educated for homesteaders. By all accounts, they had an unusually open-minded marriage for the time. Elizabeth advocated for women’s right to vote, was interested in feminism, and believed one’s roles should be based on talent and interest rather than gender.
When large cattle companies began to push out small cattle ranchers and homesteaders in Brown’s Park, the Bassetts organized other locals to fight back. They hosted many guests in their home, fostering a strong sense of hospitality, generosity, and community. Some of their guests included Butch Cassidy, Harry Longabaugh (aka. The Sundance Kid), and the “Wild Bunch” gang. They all were close family friends and often stayed and worked at the ranch to “cool down” following their illegal escapades. The Bassetts were known for supplying Butch Cassidy’s gang and other outlaws, such as “Black Jack” Ketchum and Kid Curry, with beef and fresh horses.
Josie and Ann were both considered very attractive and had a wild side. By 1893, Ann was involved romantically with Butch Cassidy, and Josie was involved with Elzy Lay, Cassidy’s closest friend.
While Cassidy was in prison, Ann became involved with Ben Kilpatrick, another outlaw. By the time Cassidy was released, Will “News” Carver, a “Wild Bunch” member, had become involved with Josie. She ended their relationship when Carver became involved with another “Wild Bunch” member and outlaw, Laura Bullion. Subsequently, Josie becomes involved with Cassidy until he again becomes involved with Ann.
The Bassett girls’ relationships with Cassidy’s Wild Bunch gang developed into a complicated circle. Despite the seemingly constant changes in romantic companions between them and the gang members, there is no indication that animosity ever resulted from this.
In 1896, several powerful and wealthy cattlemen hired cowboys to harass the sisters, stampede, and rustle their cattle to force the sisters to sell their ranch. As a result, the sisters began rustling the cattlemen’s cattle. Fortunately, the cowboys only had limited success as they feared retribution from the Bassett’s outlaw friends.
One legend is that Kid Curry, the most feared of the Wild Bunch, approached several cowboys who worked for the cattlemen and warned them to leave the Bassetts alone. It’s unknown if this story is true, but it is true that by 1899, the sisters were no longer receiving pressure to sell.
Josie married Jim McKnight at the age of 19 in 1893. In 1914, Josie and husband M.B. (Ben) Morris, without much money, established a homestead claim at Cub Creek near Split Mountain (the cabin location within the current Dinosaur National Monument), 40 miles from the family ranch. Her son Crawford and his wife lived there for a time, and grandchildren visited.
Morris was a colorful local character. She married five times and divorced four of her husbands. In her 60s, she was tried and acquitted for cattle rustling and made brandy and wine from local fruit and berries during Prohibition. She lived in the cabin for over fifty years until she fell on ice and broke her hip in 1963. She died the following year at the age of 90.