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| Hiking | 8.00 Miles |
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| | Hiking | 8.00 Miles | | | |
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| no partners | | For this first day, I was actually on the Utah side of the park... where there are actual DINOSAUR bones!
I rode into the park, took a quick look around the visitor center, then hopped aboard the shuttle up to the Dinosaur Quarry. Inside, there is an entire wall full of dinosaur bones left in relief, so that people later on may see and learn from them. It was so cool! Then I went outside and hiked a short trail that wound back around to the visitor center. The trail takes you a couple different places (with short explanations), but most notable was the Morrison Formation, in which there are still plenty of dinosaur bones embedded in the rock... outside in plain daylight. It was neat to be able to look around and see where they all were.
Next up, I headed all the way down the road to Josie's Cabin, which has some connections to Butch Cassidy and his Wild Bunch. The cabin itself, as well as the history around it, were very interesting. There were two trails there as well, which took you to Hog Canyon or Box Canyon. These canyons were where Josie would keep her cattle. The canyons are surprisingly majestic, and it's no small wonder she fought so hard to stay in that area!
On the way out of the cabin area, there was a sign indicating petroglyphs on a wall up above. So I made the short, steep hike up to the canyon wall and got a good look at those. Mostly lizards, but all interesting!
I finished off the day by hiking the Desert Voices trail, in combination with the Sounds of Silence trail. I'm glad I started with Desert Voices, as that trail is interpretive (albeit mostly geared toward kids and family), and transitioned rather well, with well thought out trail meanderings. This trail really tries to get people to care about the environment, animals, plants, air quality, etc., and I think it does a good job of trying to get kids to care about these things as well, through pictures and poems that kids have made for the trail.
The Sounds of Silence trail unfortunately didn't really do it for me. There's apparently a set way to go about the trail, but I didn't realize that until I was already a distance into it. This is because I took the connector trail in from the Desert Voices trail, instead of starting at the actual trailhead. This trail is, at times, difficult to follow. At other times, it uses rocky washes and other natural waterways as the walkway. For a good portion of the trail, this means you're walking in between huge dirt mounds on narrow waterways.. with nothing to see but the dirt. Lucky for me, when I finally got back to the connector trail, there was still more of the Desert Voices trail to see.
An excellent day, and I would definitely recommend this area to anyone! Just keep in mind that the dinosaur bones are ONLY at the Utah entrance to Dinosaur! |
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