Day 2 Dinosaur National Monument

Tuesday, July, 2015

Day 98

We woke up in the campground with our tent completely dry. Apparently, afternoon thunderstorms are common here in the summer but nothing was wet the next day so obviously there was not a lot of precipitation. We packed up early and took the remainder of the road tour through the park that we had not done yesterday. It lead to interesting rock formations, petroglyphs and Josie Morris' settlers cabin at the end of the road. There are 23 layers of rock that are exposed at Dinosaur National Monument that give insight into the earth's past and what was living at the time the layers were created.   

Turtle rock.  This is the same type of stone (Entrada Sandstone)
that makes the arches of Arches National Park.

  The petroglyphs are expressions of the Fremont people who made these pictures about 1000 years ago. They used sharp tools to peck away at the dark natural stain on the rock surface called desert varnish which reveals the light colored sandstone beneath. No one knows for sure whether the Fremont people created the petroglyphs for religious art, a symbolic language or simple self expression in idle moments. They do tell us that their creators did not have to spend every minute on survival.

If you look closely at the near center of the photograph ,you will see the large lizard.
An upclose shot of that same lizard is show in the picture below.

This lizard probably took many months to create.

Bighorn sheep and person

Notice the chipping out of the rocks to create the image

 Josie Morris lived life on her own terms. She chose to settle here in 1914 and she built several cabins on her homestead, this one built in 1935. She raised her own fruit and vegetables and canned extensively for winter. She had her own cattle that she contained within the walls of the box canyons, raised and butchered them as well as chickens, pigs and geese. She had no electricity, chopped her own wood, and got her water from the stream. She slipped in 1964 and broke her hip while feeding her horse and died that spring at 89. We have been listening to Turning Points in American History that our daughter Mallory gave us for Christmas. Just yesterday, we were learning about the Homestead Act of 1862 and it was very interesting to see some of these homesteads. Some of these families continue to work the land around Dinosaur National Monument to this day. This was one of the last regions in the USA to be homesteaded (besides Alaska) due to the ruggedness of the land and the difficulty of living here.

Josie Morris' cabin

Josie Morris

After returning to the quarry one last time we took a Fossil Walk from the quarry to the visitor center which showed different time periods of the rock layer including the Morrison formation which holds many dinosaurs, the Stump formation which is older and there was fossils of small clams and a shale layer that had evidence of fossilized fish scales. It was really interesting to see the wall of rock which held multiple dinosaur fossils that had not been excavated yet. We found more that 10 fossilized bones in this area.

Unexcavated dinosaur femur. Many small bones could be seen and touched on this wall of rock outside the quarry building.

We left the park and realized we were ready to go home.  It would be fun to come back some day and go one a several day guided rafting trip through this wilderness park. We toyed with the idea of driving up to the Tetons but they are 8 hours away and we felt it unlikely that we would find an unoccupied campsite and if we were going there we would want to stay for awhile. We made the decision to head toward home and drove to Jerome, Idaho which took until early evening. Home tomorrow! I am ready!