Saturday, August 8, 2015

One More Day in Dinosaur National Memorial


Saturday August 8, 2015       Day 11     Still at Green River Campground

We were to leave today to start heading for Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area, but decided to stay one more day at Dinosaur.  We weren’t sure about where we would stay or what we would do there, and there was still some things we could do here.  We had a good site and we really like this place. 

Like yesterday, had my coffee at the picnic table and tried to write Friday’s blog.  No fire this morning.  Got out the propane stove and cooked some Neuske’s Canadian bacon with fried eggs for breakfast.  For those of you who don’t know, Neuske’s is world reknown for their smoked meats and cheeses and is located in Wittenberg, WI.  We stop there any time we are in WI visiting Marsha’s relatives.

Marsha spent some time on her blogs, too.

Afterwards we went to a location in the park that had a homestead from 1909 from a single woman who lived there for 50 years by herself.  The old log cabin was still standing.  An unusual feature of it was that every room, about four, had an outside entry door connected inside, too.  There was a root celler and chicken coop, too.  Here water flowed out of the mountain from a pipe.  We forgot to get pictures.  There were two trailheads from there, Hog Canyon Trail, and Box Canyon Trail.  The Hog Canyon Trail was 1.5 miles round trip and that’s the one we took.  The other was .5 mile round trip.  It was interesting.  Very high cliff walls on both sides of us that got closer together, the farther we walked.  It finally dead ended.  First time I ever hiked through a canyon.  Driven through them, but this was more personal and close up.  Got some pictures while on the trail.




 
 

Back at the campground, gathered up our Flaming Gorge information that we got a few days ago at the Welcome to Utah visitor center.  We then headed to Vernal, 13 miles away.  We needed ice and some propane for my cute little 5 lb. propane cylinders that I run the grill and camp stove with.  Found a Chevron station that had all of the above, and gasoline.

In Vernal, I checked out the Ford Dealer.  I knew I would be in the Vernal area for a few days and Vernal is a big enough town to have a Ford Dealer, Showalter Motors.  I was on their website and set up an appointment for Monday or Tuesday for oil change and to get that canister purge valve changed.  The said they would respond on Monday, to let me know if they could fit me in.  The truck is working fine, even after refueling.  The oil change message comes on every time I start the truck.  I hope I can take it in on Monday. 

We drove up US-191 to the Flaming Gorge Dam visitor center and got some information.  We did not tour the dam, but will in the next few days.  I toured it in 1976 when I was passing through on the way to San Francisco.  I didn’t know anything about hydro power back then.  But I do now.  On the way we looked at the Lodgepole National Forest Campground in the Ashley National Forrest and that is where we will set up as our base for checking out Flaming Gorge area.  We even chose what site we wanted.  The campground is about 30 miles north of Vernal and about 7 miles south of the dam.  It is one of the few forested campgrounds in the area because it is on the eastern slopes of the Uinta Mountains and gets a lot of rain.  It was raining through there on our way back. 

We were hungry by then and remembered a Mexican restaurant a little north of Vernal that had a full parking lot, so we thought it must be good.  So we checked it out on the way back, and it was good.  It was the first meal we ate out on the whole trip so far.

Got back to the campground about 19:00.

Made a campfire, the first one in Dinosaur, and sat out, finishing Friday’s blog, mostly waiting for pictures to upload.  Hope you liked it. 

Tomorrow, we really will go to the Flaming Gorge area and camp at Lodgepole.

No comments:

Post a Comment