It rained really hard last night and the wind was whipping pretty fiercely. It’s always a crap shoot on which direction to have the trailer facing. If we guess wrong, then in wind storms we might get all the wind blasting the side of the trailer which can make for a rocking motion with the big gusts. We got it right here, but I still woke up once or twice to the wind. A new day meant picking an activity.
Dinosaur Trackway
Red Fleet Reservoir is just down the highway back towards Vernal and when we rode there a couple weeks ago we noticed a couple hikes along the trail. A short 1.7 mile hike goes out to the Dinosaur Trackway. The tracks were left by Dilophosaurus, a therapod dinosaur from the early Jurassic period – about 157 to 206 million years ago. This beast measured about 20 feet in length and is one of the dinosaurs featured in the Jurassic Park movie.
The hike is fairly easy as you walk up into the rocks and then wind down into the canyon. The end point is a sandstone rock shelf leading down to the lake. Along that shelf are some 200 tracks left behind when the dinosaurs lifted their feet and silt flowed into the track and filled it. You are free to wander around and look for them, though there is a signboard kind of showing where they all are. Amazing.
Battleships
Since this was such a short hike, we hiked back up and across the road to hike Battleship Rock Loop. This loop isn’t terribly far either at around 2.5 miles but you get great views. The loop starts out following J-Boy mountain bike trail and then splits off onto a hiking only trail that leads around some giant rock mountains. One looked like a huge submarine to us, and the other….a battleship!
Part of the hike takes you up onto these giant rock ships and they are massive! We hiked around the slickrock and admired views and the quietness. If this was Sedona it would be CRAWLING with people but we had it to ourselves.
Leave a Reply