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Monday,
August 14 - August 21, 2017; Dinosaur National Monument, northwest Colorado
& northeast Utah.
I
had no time between leaving Aspen, CO until after the Eclipse to paint, so this
is a painting done after that event, but this blog post is of part of the
journey to arrive there.
C1634
“Dawn over Union Peak”
(Mosquito Lake, Wyoming)
Oil Sketch on
Pannelli Telati fine Cotton Panel
5” x 7”
By the time I published
my blog posting from Aspen, Colorado (the one before the Eclipse), it was 5 PM,
and so I decided against going back up to the Lincoln Portal road and camping along
the river, as I had thought of doing, and instead headed north down the valley,
on my first leg towards the Wind River Range in Wyoming and the Eclipse. North from Aspen the landscape is lower in
altitude and so I rapidly found myself back in the sagebrush, pinion pine &
juniper country. Fifty-something miles
down the road at The junction with I70 the road ceases to be 4-lane divided highway,
as it narrows to negotiate through Glenwood Springs, and so I found myself in a
traffic jam … did not expect that.
I pulled off to check
the map and look up free campsites as I now had 4G internet. In the end I decided to head 24 miles west to
Rifle, Colorado, and spend the night in the Walmart Carpark, and resupplying in
the morning. This I did and then headed
north from Rifle on State Hwy 13, towards Meeker, and west from there on State
Hwy 64 towards Dinosaur National Monument.
Above Rifle is an interesting set of bluffs, but I really had no chance
to get the right angle for a good shot of them.
Crossing the Colorado River at Rifle, one sees why it is named thus … full
of earth red silt. And west of Meeker the
road followed the White River which had a definite milky cast to it.
Eventually
I turned north onto a dirt road, County 73, and followed it about 6 miles onto
Coal Ridge. I had left Rifle late, and
what with all the stopping to take photographs, decided to have an early camp here
on the crest of the ridge. I took a walk
through the junipers and pinion pines, and upon my returning to my camp just
off the county road, found a Winnebago parked on the road. I heard voices down the road, and when their
owners returned, it turned out they were a Dutch family in a rented Winnebago. They asked me about the road conditions ahead
(they had come from the north and I from the south), so I told them that the worst,
was just down the hill. Since they had
just walked down that far, and weren’t worried about that, then I told them
they should be fine; just to make sure that they turned left at the junction a
mile down the road, and follow that to the highway four or five miles further. They gave me two ice cold beers, and went on
their way. I could see the junction from
the crest, a few yards from my camp, and saw that they made the turning OK. Coyotes yipped and howled a bit later, and I
couldn’t help but think they should have made themselves known, for the Dutch family;
especially after they had come across me in the middle of nowhere, with my bear
spray, sheath knife and revolver loaded with snake-shot on my belt. I marveled that they had got on that road in
the rig they were driving, but the road was marked on their map … it just
didn’t indicate what kind of a road it actually was. They will have stories.
 |
| Evening shower over Skull Creek Rim. |
 |
| Dawn light on Skull Creek Rim from Coal Ridge. |
That evening and the
next morning I had been looking northwest across the valley below to Skull
Creek Rim, twelve or more miles away, and once I broke camp I headed down to US
Hwy 40, the way the Dutch had come, a few miles west along that, and then north
on the Skull Creek Rim Road. The dirt
county road winds through the Skull Creek Basin, and climbs up towards the rim through
the pinyon/juniper forest, eventually rising through a canyon until you find
yourself on the plateau behind the rim itself, and a T-junction with County
Road 16, which I took west. Here is a broad
expanse of rolling grassland, extending for miles, where I would normally
expect to find Ponderosa Pines at that altitude. Evidently the conditions are right for
grassland more than Ponderosas.
By midafternoon I had
met the paved road from the entry point of central portion of Dinosaur National
Monument to Harpers Corner overlook, where the Green River flows 2500 feet
below. I saved that for the next day,
went down to the Canyon Visitor Center of the Monument for information, and
then two miles west to Dinosaur, Colorado, for petrol … and yes, Virginia,
there is a small town called Dinosaur. Retracing
my route back up past the visitor center, I stopped at Plug Hat Butte for the
views and a nature walk. From here I
could look across the intervening few miles toward Cliff Ridge, where was the
primitive campground (no water, no toilets), that the ranger in the visitor
center had told me about.
And that’s where I now
headed … a distance of 3 or 4 miles as the Raven flies, but more than 25 by road,
10 or so on the usual dirt surface. The
campground recommended, was at a hang glider launch point (none in evidence),
but I rejected it for lack of good trees, and headed three miles west on a 4-wheel
drive road to Point of Pines, where I was in amongst a grove of Ponderosas an
Aspens, and from where I had a good view from my clifftop campsite, well worth
the 4-wheel drive. To get to there I crossed
into Utah, back into Colorado, and back into Utah, as the road wound its way
across the plateau. There were Clarks Nutcrackers here, a quiet member of the
Jay family.
Plug Hat Butte was
visible, and down on the flats, fifteen miles or so away, the lights of
Dinosaur winked on in the dusk, as well as those of Rangley, another fifteen
miles or so beyond and slightly to the left of Dinosaur, from my vantage
point. As night deepened I could see the
odd vehicle headlights coming north out of Dinosaur, and I wondered what road
they were on. In my introduction to my
blog-site, I extoll the virtues of extensive landscapes without a yard light to
be seen in the dark of the night, but just occasionally there is a magic about distant
lights in the night … this was one of those times. While I did begrudged the single yard light
at the ranch three miles away (luckily it was mostly hidden behind a nearby young
Ponderosa), the distant lights of the two small towns lent an ethereal quality to
the night … perhaps because I was 2500 feet above it all, as a god in Valhalla
might look to Midgard below.
Studying
my maps in the light of morning, I saw that those vehicular lights were not
coming north out of Dinosaur on some backroad, but northwest on US Hwy 40; made
sense, considering the several per hour there had been. That highway also bisects an interesting feature
well scene from Valhalla Point of Pines; a sinuous thin sharp ridgeline
a few miles long rising a couple hundred feet out from a flat plain, called
Snake Jim Ridge. This reef-like feature appears
to bare no relation to the surrounding geology, but then I am no geologist …
more’s the pity!
 |
| Campsite at Point of Pines, with Snake Jim Ridge 2000’
below. |
Even though there are no dinosaur exhibits in this
eastern section of the Monument, the landscape is highly interesting and
varied, from grassland plateaus, pinyon and juniper woodlands, deep red rock
canyons with cottonwoods in their depths, and the Green and Yampa Rivers
flowing and meeting up 2500 feet below the canyon rims. So I stopped at the various viewpoints on the
paved road out to the Harpers Corner Overlook, spotting Steamboat Rock far
below at Echo Park, behind which lurks the junction of the Green and Yampa
Rivers. I declined the two mile long
nature walk at Harpers Corner, since I wished to descend the desperate dugway off
the high plateau through Sand Canyon, and on to Echo Park and the Green River
while the light was good. On the way
down I stopped at some petroglyphs pecked into the canyon wall 1200 years ago,
when the surface of the canyon floor was 35 feet higher than it is today … thus
the petroglyphs are now high up on the wall.
Luckily the raking light was just right to make them out. Down at Echo Park I pottered about, taking
many photos, noted the campground for future reference should I pass this way again
(water & WC), and noted the junction of the Yampa River with the Green, in
the distance. Like the Colorado is red,
and the White has a milky quality to it, as noted previously, the Green is,
well … green.
 |
| Steamboat Rock at Echo Park. |
 |
| Steamboat Rock on the left & looking towards the
junction of the Yampa with the Green River. |
 |
| Another view with the Green River & the base of
Steamboat Rock. |
 |
| Some of the petroglyphs on the way down to Echo Park. |
Leaving Echo Park I stopped at Whispering Cave, a
shallow split in the cliff-face which once you stoop to gain entry you find extends
both right and left deep into the rock, parralelling the cliff, and also rises
through crevasses high above you, down through which there is a cooling breeze.
I expect that this breeze would not have
been conducive to permanent habitation in days of old. A few miles back up the
canyon, I stopped at the old Chew Ranch, sold to the Monument in 1966 by the
third generation Chew after 56 years of homesteading. This was still inhabited when I was a youth …
food for thought.
 |
| Whispering Cave. |
 |
| Elk in velvet at Whispering Cave. |
 |
| The Chew Ranch; sold to the Monument in 1966. |
 |
| Old cabin near the old Chew Ranch. |
A mile or two beyond I turned left onto the Yampa
Bench Road, before entering Sand Canyon through which I had descended earlier. This road I had thought about taking
yesterday, but realized I would not be able to do it before nightfall, and so
camped at Point of Pines instead … smart move.
It’s a desperate road, and while I needed 4-wheel drive only
occasionally, it is not for your ordinary passenger car, but well worth taking
if you have the ability to do so … many photo-ops, including views down into the
canyon of the Yampa River. I camped on
BLM land a few miles outside the Monument boundary, amongst the Junipers and
Pinions, where a curious little grey Plain Titmouse (Parus inornatus), hovered
about in the branches of the Pinion above me, checking me out from all angles;
I thought once he was going to alight on my shoulder to get a closer look at my
supper preparing activities. My first
sighting of one of these, and very pleasant it was. And that was Thursday, day two
of the Dinosaur National Monument, where I thought I would spend only part of
one day to breeze through!
 |
| The Yampa River in the Canyon below the Yampa Bench. |
 |
Yampa River ...
just picture Butch Cassidy hiding out in a place like this. |
 |
My Camp just outside the Monument
amongst the Junipers
& Pinyon Pines. |
