A slightly delayed post about day four and into day five, thanks to no reception.
Down, out of Rocky Mountain National Park, we meandered. Into plains, followed by hills, followed by painted rocks, sage brush, more painted rocks.
Rocks. A theme in this part of the country. It sounds silly to say out loud, I guess, but whoa — rocks. I imagined pioneers traveling through here, stopping here to farm and finding a truly astounding and frustrating number of rocks in every field. It’s hard to farm with rocks.
Lots and lots of rocks.
This was my first time in this part of the country. Or, rather, I think my parents might’ve taken us through something like this at some point. I vaguely remember a trip into Utah, but it’s a big state and I don’t remember any of these rocks.
Tall rocks. Short rocks. Rocks that climbed into the sky. Rocks that worked into a plateau. Rocks that jutted up and down. Red rocks. Orange rocks. Brown rocks.
Rocks.
It was these rocks that a fella named Earl Douglass stumbled upon dinosaur bones in 1909 and became the first paleontologist in the area. Today the quarry area, where many of the bones are, is housed in part within a National Park structure where you can actually touch them. Yes, real dinosaur bones. It’s incredible.
The beauty of the area is also incredible, and we camped in it over the night of Day 4 and into Day 5. We hiked along the Green River out of the campground, one of the few trails in the park that does allow dogs.
On the way into the park we made a pit stop or two through Colorado and into Utah.
On one stop we had to deal with a home-loan related fire. I’m told something always goes wrong with getting a home loan, but my goodness – why?! Of course Veterans United Home Loan, the company we are using, could not have let me know several weeks ago when I submitted the tax documents that they are not the right ones. They had to wait until this moment when we are traveling through an area with precious little cell signal, far from home, that they need such-and-such-a-thing RIGHT NOW. So we stopped at a McDonalds, library and post office in tiny Colby, Colorado. Wonderful.
Ice cream pit-stops are important.
When we arrived at the campground the visitor center was already closed, so we went this morning.
After viewing the dinosaur bones in the morning and almost killing the dog because she ate a seatbelt in my Volvo (I don’t want to talk about it), we bolted our way through Utah, up-up-up a mountain or two and then down, down, down into the Salt Lake valley. The night of day five we’ll spend the night at City of Rocks National Preserve, Idaho.
We’ll tell you about that tomorrow. (Or, now, later today.)
