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.

Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park

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We visited the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park in June 2023 and again in May 2024. The park is a short drive from Montrose, Colorado. During our most recent visit we stayed at the Riverbend RV Park & Cabins on the edge of Montrose. This was a very nice smaller RV Park on the banks of the Uncompahgre River.

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park is a short drive from Montrose. During our first visit we took the South Rim scenic drive, a paved road that follows the canyon rim for 7 miles from Tomichi Point to High Point and features 12 overlooks. We stopped at several overlooks, each had a short trail that led to spectacular views into the canyon as well as interpretive signs giving information on the flora and fauna of the area.

During our second visit we took the East Portal Road which is a windy, steep scenic road down to the Gunnison River. East Portal is actually within the Curecanti National Recreation Area, but only accessible from within Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. We walked around the East Portal campground area next to the river at the Gunnison River tunnel diversion dam, and then drove to an overlook view of the Crystal Dam at the end of the East Portal Road.

Pictures from both our visits are provided below. Click on the thumbnails to view the photos.

Arches National Park

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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.

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