Amazing canyons, bighorns, and dinosaurs

After our fishing float down the Green, we opted to stay another night in Dutch John and look around some more. Friday morning weather was gloomy and stormy, and we were really glad we had had the good weather on Thursday for our trip!

We wanted to see two visitor's centers that we had passed by on other drives. The first was the Visitor's Center at the big dam--we had been told it was a good tour and to be sure to bring quarters to feed the giant fish at the end. When we arrived at the Center, we parked next to a very cool-looking Indian brand motorcycle, which was in a parking space signed "Reserved Senior Citizen". We talked for a bit to the "senior citizen" couple riding it. It was a brand-new motorcycle although it looks kind of vintage--they had ridden it all the way from Rhode Island!

Sign on fence on right says: "Reserved Senior Citizen"

Flaming Gorge Dam Visitor Center - Note stormy skies over mountain on right.

Inside the center we signed up for the next tour and went in to watch a movie while we waited, which wasn't long. We were the only ones on this tour, and we first had to empty our pockets and go through a metal detector while an armed ranger watched us. Our tour leader then led us outside the building and started her spiel. Then a thunderclap sounded, along with a lightning flash. "Oops," she said. "I saw lightning. That means we have to stop the tour. We'll try again in a half hour." So back inside we went. We decided to watch a longer movie, about constructing the dam, while waiting for the next tour. (We really wanted to feed the fish!) The movie turned out to be an old 1950s propaganda film for dam building but we refrained from booing.

Now a bunch of people had come into the center with a lot of noisy little kids and they all were going on the next tour. So we lined up again, emptied our pockets again (the ranger cut us no slack even though we'd been in the building the whole time since the last tour attempt). This time we got to hear the first part of the spiel again, and walked up a bunch of steps and heard the second part of the spiel (different tour guide). Then suddenly, another lightning bolt and crack of thunder. "Oops," she said, "I saw lightning. We have to stop the tour. We'll try again in a half hour." We gave up and went back to the van and headed to the next stop.

The second visitor center we wanted to see is called the Red Canyon Overlook Visitor's Center. Our fishing guide Eric had told us we really needed to see this place, and he's right. First off, driving in we spotted a herd of bighorn sheep, the first we'd seen here, so that was exciting in itself. The Center is right on the edge of the Red Canyon area of the Flaming Gorge. This part of the canyon has a feel very much like the Grand Canyon. It's a huge canyon--1700 feet deep and 4000 ft across. The wall of the Center next to the canyon edge is all glass with amazing views of the rocky canyon walls and Green River below. Jack took photos of the views, the stuffed animals, and me with the impressive Mountain Man (Carol has a thing for mountain men!)

To appreciate the following photos, note this canyon is 1700 feet deep.

The view of the Red Canyon from inside the visitor center.

A few wild animals that we did not encounter.

Another wild animal we did not encounter.

Then we went outside and walked the trail along the canyon edge. Carol goofed around, trying to get as close as possible to the edge for a scary photo op. We both got vertigo!

Carol illegally trying to jump fence.

Then she plays on the edge of the canyon.

Driving out we saw even more bighorn sheep, this time spotting two rams having a stare-down contest. Since it was Friday night, we decided to have supper at the Red Canyon Lodge, which we'd passed driving into the Visitor Center. Good choice--we had smoked trout for an appetizer, and the special, buffalo chili, both yummy. While eating we watched the mule deer and the hummingbirds in the front yard of the lodge. Also, this turned out to be the site of the awards banquet for the "One Fly" contest that was going on Thursday when we floated the river. This is an annual fundraiser for Trout Unlimited, and they have a big dinner and present awards, like "Biggest Loser" to the fisherman who loses his fly first. Looked like fun. Some fishermen types were practicing their flycasting on the front lawn while we ate, trying to get their lure through a hoop. This is DEFINITELY a big flyfishing area.

Bighorn sheep lying down on the job.

Dinner date at the Red Canyon Lodge.

On Saturday we decided to drive to Dinosaur National Monument and spend a few days camping there. We'd been reading some brochures about it and it seemed like an interesting park, that we weren't sure we'd ever heard of before. The Park is near the town of Vernal, which we drove through and gassed up in. The town was really impressive, with giant pots and hanging baskets of flowers lining about 5 miles of the main street (Route 40). Somebody has done a lot of work to make this happen!

Flowers everywhere, in full bloom.

Dinosaurs, here we come.

It was getting late when we got to Dinosaur National Monument, but we had time to drop by the main Visitor Center to get an overview. Nice center, like most national parks. (Free entrance, because this is the week of the 100th anniversary of the National Park System. Although we would have gotten free entrance anyway with our Golden Age cards...) We got a map of the Park and bought a couple of books, and took some dinosaur bone pics. This place is the site of a MAJOR Jurassic era fossil find back around 1909 to 1924--10 dinosaur species were discovered, with 20 complete skeletons, including rare juvenile skulls and skeletons. This is the REAL Jurassic Park, folks. It's a quarry for dinosaur bones--a logjam of bones. It's surmised that these animals died during drought periods and their bones were washed down and covered up when the rivers flooded again. Most of those earlier finds of the complete skeletons ended up in major museums around the country, including the Smithsonian. The cool thing is that the place was declared a national monument in 1915, preserving a portion of the bone quarry just as it is, under protection of a big warehouse-like building--basically it's a rock wall of dinosaur bones that you can see and study and even touch some of them. The Park has been added to over the years, and now it's a GIANT park, hundreds of thousands of acres, with many more features than the bone quarry--lots of hiking trails, river rafting, geological oddities, native American petroglyphs, etc.

We left the Visitor's Center and headed to the Green River Campground in the Park, to locate a campsite. Since we get the half price of $9 per night, we decided to stay 3 nights. Obviously lots to see here. The campground is right on the banks of the Green with a good view of Split Mountain. It was almost full, since this is the next to last weekend of their season, but we found a shady campsite and had Happy Hour at our picnic table, after walking along the riverbank for awhile.

Next morning we got up early and drove the 5 miles back to the Visitor Center and the nearby Quarry building, to see the "wall of bones." Really neat. Lots to see and read about. We talked to the knowledgeable ranger on duty to find out why the paleontologists were willing to have all these supposedly valuable dinosaur bones just left here in the rock, for people to look at. She said they got so many skeletons and bones from this quarry, and so many were sold to museums all over the country (Andrew Carnegie was the main funder of the original digs here) that there was a glut on the market. And then the Great Depression hit, and then WWII, and no one was interested in digging, selling or buying dinosaur bones for a long while. Apparently there was another somewhat similar fossil site that was declared a National Monument and they dug out all the bones from it, and then it lost its National Monument status. They didn't want that to happen here, as there was also talk of damming the rivers that run through this park, which would cover a lot of the important fossil and geological sites. So someone had the bright idea of leaving a lot of the bones in the rock where people could see them and learn about them, so that's what happened. There is still lots of important paleontological research going on within the Park, just at different sites.

The Quarry building preserves the dig where so many bones were found and sent to museums all over the US.

One side of the "wall of bones" dig has been preserved.

Facing a part of the dig wall. Bones are scattered everywhere in the rock surface.

Carol and I are sitting on the femur of a dinosaur (casting).

Carol standing next to the femur of a dinosaur (real).

After taking some photographs of this fascinating bone quarry, we decided to drive the 24-mile auto tour called "Tour of the Tilted Rocks," which goes past amazing geology, old ranches, and petroglyph sites. The petroglyphs were really good ones--rock art made by the "Fremont People," ancestors of today's Ute tribe of native Americans, about 1000 years ago. We saw recognizable human figures, animals like bighorn sheep and also other shapes and designs.

One of several rock faces filled with petroglyphs.

The Split Mountain canyon of the Green River was really interesting--the river cut down through a rock mountain when it looked like it would have been much easier for it to go around it. The geological explanation is too complicated to explain here--maybe the river just wanted a bigger challenge!

Split Mountain. At the base is the Green River, behind where Carol is standing.

The end of the auto tour was the ranch of Josie Bassett Morris, a rancher who was legendary around here. Now this was one interesting woman! After divorcing four husbands and possibly poisoning the fifth one, Josie decided to homestead a ranch by herself way out in the boondocks (this was around 1914, when she was 40 years old). She built a series of cabins, the last one in 1935, which you can still see and go inside of. She raised and butchered cattle and pigs, chickens and geese. She grew a big garden and canned her own food. She had just a fireplace for heat and cooking, and oil lamps for light. Her water came from a spring. She used two big nearby box canyons to corral her livestock. She could ride and shoot as good as any man. She was accused twice (but never convicted) of cattle rustling, and was "an associate" of the outlaw Butch Cassidy who hung around in these parts a good bit. (Although Josie normally wore pants and kept her hair cut short while on her ranch, when she had these occasional run-ins with the law and the courts, she would don her best dress, pin up her hair, and simper in front of the judge: "Now, Judge, how in the world could a little old lady like me possibly kill, dress out, and hide 10 beeves all by myself?" It always seemed to work. Maybe the judge was just afraid of her!) In addition to her independent nature, she was apparently very charming and also very generous, always helping people out with food and money when she had it, especially during the Depression, when times were tough for lots of folks. She died at the age of 90, after falling while feeding her horse in icy conditions and breaking her hip. Her ranch site was lovely, peaceful and quiet, with lots of cottonwood trees around for shade and a huge grapevine in the yard. (They were tart but tasty--like the wild fox grapes at home.)

Carol standing near the entrance to Josie's log cabin, which had a dirt floor.

Now we came back to our campsite, had some leftover buffalo chili for supper, and are doing the blog...

Flaming Gorge Trout Fishing

Three times he circled overhead screaming at me. Once was enough but three times bordered 

on rudeness. The osprey had caught the first trout of the day and dangled it in his claws 

for me to see. And I had not caught any trout and didn't even know we were having a 

first-catch contest!

Eric (my Old Moe guide with 27 years experience in this section of the Green River below 

the Flaming Gorge dam) and I were discussing the approach to fishing this day. Carol, 

who rode gunshot in the rear with her camera had caught sight of the osprey as it dove 

into the 43-degree water, disappeared for a second or two, and then came out of the water, 

wings first, with a trout neatly arranged, for least wind resistance, head first in its 

claws.

Here the water is blowing towards us at a fast pace. Boats are launched to the right of the river. Guides row their clients across the fast current to the left side of the river where eddies provide the guides some time  to orient their clients before heading downstream. It was here that Carol spotted the osprey catch the trout and then circle over our boat three times.

Eric told me this day on the river was a "contest day" for many of the boats leaving 

the put-in just below the dam. Each boat carried two fishermen and a guide. Each fisherman 

who had signed up for the "contest" had to select one dry fly to fish with all day and the one who caught the 

most fish won the contest. If a fisherman lost his fly, he had to stop fishing. 

I told Eric that didn't sound like the way I wanted to fish the river! I was used 

to dry fly fishing when trout were rising to the surface to take aquatic insects, and if 

this was not happening, I would fish below the surface with imitation nymphs.

Eric agreed. We both knew that more than 90 percent of a trout's diet is from aquatic insects 

caught on the bottom of a stream or in the column of water below the surface where the 

insects rise to the surface. I love to fish with dry flies on the surface, but I usually don't 

use them until I see at least one trout rising to the surface to take a floating insect 

desperately trying to dry its wings and take flight. This morning we saw no such action. 

However, very tiny flies were coming off the water that we call midges, which refers to a 

collection of tiny aquatic insects that few fishermen know, or care to know, their 

scientific names. 

So we rigged my fly rod for dry fly fishing so I could test the water, while Eric rigged 

his fly rod with three dangling tiny midge nymph patterns mounted on size 22 hooks, which 

are very, very small hooks. All of the nymph patterns were tied to a delicate 5x leader of about 

seven to eight feet in length. On the bottom end just below the nymphs was a string of 

about ten small lead beads to make the nymphs sink. Attached to the other end was a floating 

ball that looked very much like a ping-pong ball (which in flyfishing circles is politely 

called a "strike indicator" rather than a "bobber"). The fishing line, called a fly line, 

was attached to the rod and reel.

I started fishing first with my fly rod in a backwater area where we had seen a previous 

"contest" fisherman miss a trout that was apparently taking midges on the surface. It was 

then that the osprey show-off circled overhead, dangling the trout and bragging that he 

had caught the first trout.

After several casts with my rod yielded no takes, we shifted to Eric's rod, which I drifted 

down the seam that separates the fast water and the slower water circling back. On the first 

drift, I had a fish on, but he got off. On the second drift I caught my first trout, a 

rainbow of about 9 inches who fought like a much bigger trout. The vivid colors and hard 

fighting told me this trout was born in the Green River. These are wild trout.

Fish on!

On my third or fourth drift down this seam I caught two trout at one time! That's sort of 

like getting a hole-in-one to a golfer. Eric said it was his first for the season. I looked 

around for that osprey to rub it in, but he was nowhere in sight.

Two trout caught at the same time.

After catching a couple of more fish in this fast water, Eric said we should move downstream where 

the fish were bigger. It wasn't long before I caught a large rainbow, who must 

have jumped out of the water six or seven times before we could land him. He was a real 

beauty about 16 to 17 inches with great color.

Jack in the background all smiles as guide Eric holds his rainbow trout for Carol's camera.

As we moved downstream the gorge became narrower and more beautiful. I continued to catch,

or at least hook, rainbow trout of varying sizes. After passing through several rapids then 

I started catching brown trout. Usually I would expect brown trout to run deep and fight 

there. But many of these brown trout took to the air just like the rainbow. I had a long fight

with a good-size brown.

The gorge narrows.

The rapids get heavy.

The fish fight harder. Jack tries to maneuver a large brown trout into Eric's net.

Finally Eric nets the 18-inch colorful brown Jack caught.

This was one of my most fun days of fishing. The Flaming Gorge below the dam is spectacular, I had 

a great guide, the weather was gorgeous, and Carol took lots of pictures, saw lots of birds, and had fun 

also. We were tired and hungry when we got back to camp, and the weather was threatening storms. We

wolfed down a sandwich and took a nap before working on the blogs. We decided to stay another night

at the Dutch John campground so we could do a little more sightseeing in the area.

Utah Wildlife and Geology

We really enjoyed our 5 days at the Buckboard campground. It was very peaceful and scenic, and we saw quite a few birds and other wildlife while we were there. One morning just after waking Carol looked out the small window at the foot of the bed and saw a mule deer grazing right by the van. When she went outside to do some morning birdwatching, a small herd of mule deer, including a young buck, raised their heads to look at her. They seemed about as tame as the whitetail deer back home!

Taken from the small screen window where we sleep, the large-eared mule deer is on the left.

Turned out there were four deer. 

On the right is a buck with two does on either side with another doe on the left grazing.

We added a couple of birds to our lifelist from this campground, including a poorwill that a neighboring camper spotted roosting in a nearby tree. Poorwills are kin to our whippoorwills back home, only their call is missing the first syllable--it's just "Poor Will, Poor Will"! We also saw lots of beautiful mountain bluebirds and sage thrashers.

A poorwill hunkered down high in a tree near our RoadTrek.

Jack gathered dead sagebrush for a campfire every night (getting a few cuts and scratches in the process that Nurse Carol had to attend to). We sat by the fire and watched the stars come out. The dry, tangled branches made a lovely flame, with no crackling. One night by the campfire we saw the silhouettes of a small herd of pronghorn antelope walk by in single file. Going down to the lake for a drink, we surmised.

Both of us got a lot of work done while staying at Buckboard, and were sad to leave. But new wonders awaited us, so we packed up on Wed. morning. We wanted an early start in hopes of seeing more wildlife. In particular we wanted to see some moose and bighorn sheep. We didn't get far down the road when Carol yelled for Jack to stop the van (this often happens when Carol spots something--fortunately there was no other traffic on the road at the time!) Up on a hill to the right was a giant bird-like shape. We viewed it through both sets of binoculars and it was a golden eagle--another bird for our lifelist. These birds are huge! (About 3.5 feet tall with 7 ft wingspan, according to our bird book.) He had a great view of the countryside from up there on his hill.

This photo hardly does justice to the Golden Eagle sitting just to the right at the top of this hill, until you realize the top of that hill is probably a quarter mile away.

We then proceeded to the Sheep Creek Canyon driving loop, seeing a LOT of mule deer and pronghorns along the way. The Sheep Creek area is known for its amazing geology, covering several geological ages in one spot, with all kinds of rock formations. It's also known as being a good spot to see bighorn sheep. Alas, no sheep for us this time, but the scenery was jawdropping, as you can see in the series of photos. Every bend had an even more photogenic view than the last. The creek itself was hidden most of the time in jungle-like greenery, but Jack was able to get creekside a couple of times and look for--you know what. He can't resist a creek. He's always looking for little flies or grasshoppers to throw in and see if he can get a trout to rise to it. Enjoy these photos--we certainly enjoyed the drive despite the lack of sheep!

The dirt road leading into Sheep Creek Canyon. 

It's early morning and the sun is just reaching the tops of the mountains.

This formation towering over our Road Trek looks (to Jack) like the statue of a Mayan king with headdress. Note the moon in the cloudless blue sky above and to the left of the Mayan king.

Sheer cliffs ahead highlighted by the sun. Sheep Creek, out of sight, is on the left.

Icing on cakes??

The rising sun cast deep shadows in the canyon.

Mountain castles??

Dancing figures, on top left, and watching audience on top right?? [Carol: Jack has a very good imagination, doesn't he?]

Sheep Creek.
No fishing allowed, but there's got to be a trout lying in that pool.

Bowling pins on top of mountain??

Slip-sliding away...

Mountain lying down on the job.

Still hoping for a moose sighting, we decided to drive another "scenic backway" as they call it, to a remote lake. Also Carol had read about an old fire tower on top of Ute Mountain that was still being maintained and wanted to see it and photograph it, in honor of her aunt and uncle Dennis and "Toots" Surber, who spent months living in fire towers on top of mountains back in our area of western Virginia. Getting to the Ute Mountain Fire Tower entailed many miles of driving on a washboarded gravel road, but since we live on a washboarded gravel road, no real problem there. The top of Ute Mountain was a spectacular setting, with a 360-degree view of the surrounding mountains--just what is needed for an effective fire tower. The fire tower was built by CCC camp guys in the 1930s and is well-maintained and freshly painted. No ranger was there, and it was locked up (tours happen sometimes but it's irregular). But we didn't let that stop us--we limbo-ed under the locked rail and climbed the stairs--they obviously weren't serious about keeping people off the first part of the stairs at least. It was a beautiful view from there--our first glimpse of the taller, snow-dotted peaks in the distance!

The Ute Mountain Fire Tower.

As an added attraction, the ranger district had received a grant for a homing pigeon interactive project. They have a brand-new homing pigeon "house" next to the fire tower. Nobody but us and the pigeons was up there on the mountain this morning, and the pigeons were free to fly. A few of them were in their house still sleeping and a few were up on the roof of the fire tower. This project is to teach some of the history of firefighting in this area and get folks to pay more attention to it, I guess. The early rangers who lived in the fire tower during firefighting season used to communicate using homing pigeons. According to the informative write-up about the grant, they take some of these pigeons down to town, and let people (such as schoolchildren) write and attach messages to them and let them go. The pigeons fly back up to the fire tower and give the message to the rangers.

Homing pigeon shelter.

Inside the shelter are four homing pigeons. (Can you find them?)

Carol on fire tower.

Pigeons on fire tower roof, after their performance.

We ate lunch at the picnic table and enjoyed the peaceful setting. While we were eating, most of the homing pigeons gathered in a flock and started flying around and around over us in a circle. They then all landed on the roof of the fire tower to accept our applause--not sure if they were looking to be fed as well, but in this they were disappointed. (Some of them were white, and this reminded us that at Carol's mom's funeral we arranged for a flock of white "doves"--which were really homing pigeons, but since pigeons are also called "rock doves" that's OK--to be released and they did the same thing--flew around and around for a bit and then headed off for home, wherever that was.)

We finally headed down and continued our drive on the washboarded road to Browne's Lake, still in hopes of moose. We finally got there and didn't see any moose. The lake looked fairly low, but a meandering creek, which fed the lake, beckoned to Jack. We wandered along the bank for awhile but Jack was not able to catch any local grasshoppers to feed the trout which were probably in there (we didn't see any, but it sure was a pretty creek).

Jack, always on the lookout for trout, pauses near a likely trout spot on the creek 

flowing out of Browne Lake.

Back on the road, which seemed a lot shorter going out than in, we headed for our campground in Dutch John. Tomorrow (Thursday) is our scheduled fishing/boating trip down the Green River.

On the way out, Jack is stopped by local range cows for speeding.