Day 37

 

 July 23 - Dinosaur National Park, UT

Cassandra and I got into an argument early in the morning, and it put a damper on the first activity of the day - it was a frustrating misunderstanding that we worked through (because we love!). Cassandra took the lead on planning our activities for the day, and we went on a hike through the desert to see rock formations and cool views of Split Mountain.

We got on the trail by around 11am, and it was already pretty hot. We got lucky with some good cloud cover for much of the hike, so it wasn't too rough weatherwise, but it was absolutely exhausting to all of us by the end of it. The sights were every bit worth it...

After the hike, we drove out to an expansive petroglyph site that contained over 1000 year-old petroglyphs! It is always fun seeing a reminder of people's historic, ancient presence in the world (in a place we can drive to in our car…). What did those people think about when the lived here? Were these desert lands full of wonder or were they burdensome? There were some really recognizable pictures of longhorn sheep, lizards, and humans in all sorts of shapes and positions.

From there, we drove to the Josie Morris Homestead, which is where 40 year old Morris lived for the last 50 years of her life. It was such a neat, rugged, and impressive place for a woman (or any person) to make a solitary home for herself! She was clearly a badass person!

 

We headed back to the campsite (viewing Turtleshell Rock on the way)...

...and spent the rest of the evening play games and cooling off along a small beach on the Green River from our campsite. It was such a lovely, peaceful evening in an incredibly beautiful place. We tried our best to take it easy and conserve any energy we had left.

Ev and Til made friends bike riding in the evening and went to a Ranger Talk about the night sky that was a bit all over the place, yet we've come to love the clear night skies we've seen on the way out west, and it is unlikely that we will many more skies like this for the rest of our trip…

They finished their Junior Ranger Packets and are excited to collect two more badges tomorrow on our way further eastward.

I'm so excited to head to the Rocky Mountains tomorrow! If it was cooler here, we would be much more contented, but the desert in July is a tough place to be. Indubitably, the Rockies will be refreshing.