Our Trip to Vernal, Day Two

Our second day in Vernal was a lot of fun. Of course we slept too late to take advantage of the continental breakfast, so we stopped at JB's on our way to Dinosaur National Monument. Brigham normally eats pancakes, but these pancakes were huge and overcooked, so Brigham wouldn't eat them. Luckily, I made banana muffins before we left and we also had plenty of juice and snacks for the car ride.

The monument is about 20-25 minutes outside of Vernal so it didn't take long to get there.


Our first stop was the Visitor's Center. There actually wasn't much to do there but it did give us a chance to talk to the park rangers to see what we were supposed to do. They said we could just go up to the quarry on our own. So we did. It's just a short ride up.


This is the view from the parking lot. The rocks are so cool there. Unlike any rock formations I have ever seen. If you click on the picture you can see it bigger.



The quarry itself was really cool. I had kind of seen it on tv before but I had no idea it was so big.

It's really amazing how many bones are in just this one mountain.






So many cool bones!

After the quarry we went on a short drive through the monument to see petroglyphs. The first stop wasn't too far away.


Pretty cool.

The second one was a lot longer. I wasn't even sure if there were petroglyphs at the end of this trail. We never saw any, but it was a fun little hike anyway.


Such cool mountains.


I love this picture of Jonathan. That tree in the distance was really cool looking. I thought it was dead but there were little leaf buds on it. Still, it was the only tree around so kind of creepy.


We saw this little lizard on our walk. It was sitting in the perfect spot on a rock, but I took too long getting my camera. Luckily, we could still see it and it held still long enough for me to get a picture.


Such cool rock formations!


We hadn't seen any petroglyphs and we'd been walking for a long time so we decided to turn back. It was still fun and we saw a lot of cool things.

We headed back for Vernal to see the temple before we headed home. Jonathan was really excited to see the temple, he wanted to see it as soon as we got there but we told him he had to wait. Finally, it was time.


We were still kind of tired from our hike and we were covered in red dust, but it was nice and peaceful.


The gates were open so we went in on the grounds. Jaaromy felt a little guilty walking around in our street clothes while there were sessions going on inside. So we just took a quick picture.


It was a nice and relaxing stop before the long drive home.

We stopped in Heber for a late lunch/early dinner and even got home before dark. I'm glad we have fun things to see so close to home.

Another successful trip. We really should do this more often.