Camping in Dinosaur land - Days 1 & 2

Our next stop was Dinosaur land in Utah where we camped for one night at the Green River campground. We were very close to Quarry Exhibit Hall where the Wall of Bones is located. We made the most of our first day by taking the shuttle to the Wall of Bones and then taking the hiking trail back to the Visitor's Center.

The path you see is the Fossil Discovery trail that goes from the Visitor's Center to the Quarry Exhibit Hall. We saw a couple fossils and some petroglyphs.

White arrow is supposed to be pointing out a fossil but we were not sure what it was.

One of these looks like a vertebra but I cannot tell what the first one is.

You may have heard of the invasion of Mormon Crickets in Nevada and other areas. We ran into them on our drive to get to Dinosaur land! I did not realize they were crickets when we were on the freeway but here is a picture of what the road looked like.

I thought it was leaves or something. Then we decided to check out a few short hikes to see petroglyphs and an old cabin in the area. The trails had thousands of these crickets!! I didn't get any pictures - we were mostly trying to avoid them. But here is a pic from online.

They can get up to three inches long and they were just gross!! Every step we took on the trail made about ten of them jump out of the way. Avery was afraid at first...she kept falling farther behind on the trail and Carlton said she started shaking because she was so afraid of them! He gave her a little pep talk about what a big girl she was and how they were more afraid of her. All she had to do was a big girl stomp to make them jump away. That seemed to help a lot! 

So here are some petroglyphs we found.

We also saw Turtle Rock.

Then we made our way to Josie Bassett Morris' cabin where she lived for 50 years until she died at 90 in 1964. From her cabin we did a hike to a box canyon nearby where she used to corral her animals.

We didn't go all the way to the box canyon because it was pretty warm and the trail had very little shade. So we went back to the cabin where we had parked and then Carlton and Gavin decided to hike to the other box canyon where Josie kept animals. I think Avery had had enough of the crickets.

Back at the campground, the kids decided they needed to go to the river and stick their feet in. It was definitely muddy but at least we didn't have the crickets at our campground!! I think all the lizards were keeping them away.

This was our campground, right near the Green River! On our way out of town the next day, we stopped at the Visitor's Center again for the kids to be sworn in as Junior Rangers of Dinosaur National Monument.

The last stop before heading home was to get our pictures in front of the official sign!

That wraps up our camping adventure for this trip!! We hope you enjoyed the pictures!

RMNP Camping - Days 4 & 5

Our last full day in RMNP we hiked from our campground to Sprague Lake hoping to get there and back before a forecasted rainstorm. 

During our walk around the lake, we came across a goose and her goslings. Very cute!

We were going to take the shuttle back to our campground because the storm was looking imminent and also the kids were getting cranky about hiking. Unfortunately we waited for the shuttle for a good 20 minutes and never saw it. We were afraid if we waited longer, then we would get caught in the rain. We decided to take a different trail back - the same trail that the horses go on for one of the many horseback rides available in the park. It was going fine until we came to a creek that was a little too deep and wide to walk across and the stones were too far apart for us to use to cross it.  A group of horseback riders came to cross it when we were trying to figure out what to do, so we asked the guide if there was someplace along the creek to cross. She didn't think there was and told us our best bet was to backtrack to the trail we initially took to Sprague Lake. Carlton and I turned around to do that but before we got very far, Brenden and Christine had found a way to cross that had been hidden by some trees and tall grasses. Thankfully we were able to cross there and not have to go back!! We made it back to the campground just as the rain started to fall.

Later that day we went to a Ranger talk at the Discovery Center and then decided to drive to some of the same spots we were at before to look for more wildlife.

We went to Beaver Ponds (where beavers no longer live) and found this moose hanging out.

Here the kids are showing their Junior Ranger stickers they got after the Ranger talk.

We also went to Sheep Lake area thinking we might see some Bighorn Sheep but instead we got to see this Bull Moose! Sorry the pictures aren't great - all I had was my phone for taking pictures. But I also took a video (below).

In the parking lot for Sheep Lake there were a couple Rangers who had a Moose antler so the kids could see how big it was.

We also saw some deer on the side of the road and this Elk who seemed to be posing for the camera.

The next day was our day to pack up and head towards Dinosaurland in UT. A few pictures of our campsite and the kids entertaining themselves.

Avery really loved riding her bike in the campground and had to get one last ride in before being stuck in the car for 5 hours.

On our way out of the park, we stopped for the kids to get sworn in as Junior Rangers for RMNP now that they had completed the activities in the Junior Ranger books.

We didn't get to see any bighorn sheep in RMNP but we did see this group on the road north! A few were right next to the highway and the rest were up on the mountainside. They are a bit hard to see - they blend in with their surroundings really well.

The next post is on Dinosaurland!