Dinosaur National Monument

While going to visit the kids last weekend, we wanted to go another way other than the interstate. One of the reasons was that we wanted to visit Dinosaur National Monument near Vernal, Utah.

Since we still had limited time in the park, we decided to take a self-guided auto tour. The tour we chose was tour of the "Tilted Rocks".

Our first stop was going to see Spilt Mountain. It is so named because the Green River has split it in half. This has produced a mystery which is how and why did the river cut through the center of a mountain instead of taking an easier course around it?

On our way to Split Mountain... Split Mountain. The steep tilt of the rock layers is what made Split Mountain a mountain. These rocks were once level, but have been warped upward into an irregular dome shape.The distinctive color pattern of these mountains has been compared to "melting Neopolitan ice cream" and I have to agree.

Palenontologists say that many of these mountains contain 150 million year old dinosaur fossils. I would love to have found one!This is known as "Elephant Toes Butte". It does look like a giant elephant foot, doesn't it? Though it does date back to the age of dinosaurs, it originated as a sand dune in a windswept desert. Dinosaur tracks have been found around it.
This is called Placer Point on the Green River in the park. The name refers to an effort in the 1930s to dredge and sluice gold from the river bottom here. The gold proved to be too powdery to extract profitably and the operation eventually folded.

Although gold did not play a leading role in the area's history, the Green River did. Its canyons made the land so rugged that explorers and settlers large bypassed the area except for a handful who tried floating down the river.

A great place to visit and we will be back to explore more parts!