Utah – Dinosaur National Monument – Recreational Hiking and Sight Seeing

Dinosaur National Monument straddles Utah and Colorado. The Utah side contains the Quarry Exhibit Hall where most of the dinosaur bones can be viewed by the public. This park has some of the best nature trails I’ve ever hiked. Some of the trails can be steep, but the park service has built stairs to make the climb easier. The number one difficulty with hiking in this park is that most trails have no shade. Be prepared for a hot hike in the summer time.

You can park at the visitors center, grab your cameras and backpacks. Catch the bus up to the exhibit hall (you’re not allowed to drive our vehicle to the hall unless you have special needs, like a ramp). The bus comes every 15 minutes. After you visit the exhibit hall, you can hike back to the visitors center using the fossil discovery trail.

Exhibit Hall:

These are casts of fossils that were found.

This is the view of the wall from the balcony.

There is a display showing which museums received fossils from this quarry.

There are some historical photos going back to the first discovery of the fossils. A video shows how they used to use jackhammers and explosives to remove rock. My jaw dropped when I saw them blow up the rock to excavate the fossils.

This is a display showing the relative sizes of each type of dinosaur that was uncovered at this dig.

Fossil Discovery Trail:

There is a stairway of stepping stones you must walk down to get to the trail down in the valley (you can see people on the trail in this photo). This is across the parking lot from the exhibit hall.

So the first view point indicates that we need to look for clam fossils. There’s a picture on the plaque so we know what we are looking for.

The challenge is finding it in this pile of rubble.

This time, we’re looking for white painted arrows. There are white dots and arrows on the wall. It takes some careful examination to see the bones, err, fossils.

This is the view of the valley from the ledge we were standing on.

OK, this is cool. There’s a white arrow that is difficult to see. You can see a vertebrae embedded in the rock in that crack above the arrow. They should have used bright orange for the arrows.

At the top of the walkway is this bone. This one is low to the ground. The arrow is worn off.

This trail is well maintained and an easy hike. There were a lot of non-hikers out here.

Somewhere in this giant wall of rock are tiny fish scale fossils.

We looked for quite some time and gave up.

The trail winds around the hill and returns to the visitors center.

Everything around here looks like a fossil.

Self-guided Tour

We got back into the car and started the self-guided tour. There is a box at the intersection where the park entrance meets the visitor center road. The box has guided tour maps for a dollar. We put our dollar in and grabbed a map. Each stop is marked with a numbered sign and the map describes what you’re looking for.

Stop 1 (Swelter Shelter):

We searched around the area but there are no other glyphs that we found.

The rock formations are really cool to look at.

We did not stop at all the stops. Here is the view from a few of the stops along the way:

Stop 3:

There was a trail. We decided to walk it.

There isn’t much to this trail. It goes to the rocks and there is a road on the other side.

Stop 5:

Stop 7:

Stop 13:

This was an interesting stop. The main road turns into a narrow gravel road. Stop 12 had no stop, just a sign. We drove on. Stops 8-11 were minor sights.

Close up of first petroglyph in this sequence.

Stop 14:

This trail is steep, but it’s easy to climb and it leads to a ledge near the petroglyphs.

If you look close, there are several lizards.

The flute player (near the middle, partially worn).

At the top of the trail is a ledge to walk on. There’s a marker ahead.

You can see my truck in the pull-off. The trail gains altitude fast.

As it turns out, there are real lizards here too.

Michelle is trying to get a better picture.

The petroglyphs cannot be seen from the road. They’re too close to the ledge.

From up here, there are lizard glyphs all over the place.

The trail is a bit narrower at this point, but it’s still safe.

Stop 15:

There are two trails and the Josie Morris Cabin. This is the turn-around for the road and there is a lot of parking in this area. There is also a bathroom (dry toilet).