RV Adventures in Dinosaur National Monument: Jurassic Park Awaits | RV Lifestyle

And you're staying back to watch the trailer, right? Okay. Good morning. We're currently staying at Green River Campground in Dinosaur Monument. And this morning we're going over to the visitor center to check everything out. We're taking a shuttle to go see dinosaur bones. Up to the dinosaur quarry. Right, right. This is part of the exhibit here at Dinosaur Monument. So we're going to go check it out. And we're taking you with us. It's pretty neat. Look at all the bones there. How large they are. You can see behind me, they've revealed all these bones. These are actual dinosaur bones and this is the actual soil that they were discovered in. What they did is they uncovered them to the point that they're visible but they left them in place and built the building around them so that people can come here and see what this was like. This is probably one of the largest dinosaur bone collections that ever discovered. There's more of it all around here. It was discovered in the early 1900s. A lot of the dinosaur skeletons that you see today in museums came from here. They excavated and removed a number of skeletons but in the 50s they decided to stop removing skeletons and to preserve the site as much as they could. This is just a very small section of the dinosaur site. It goes on and on into the hill here behind us. Now how did all the dinosaur bones get here? At one time this was a wetlands and the dinosaurs lived here. Then a drought came through and a lot of the dinosaurs died. Died right here. Then they had a flash flood and all the bones were moved and ended up being deposited in this area. So it's kind of interesting how all this came together. Now this part of the wall, the bones aren't as exposed and this would be more of how they found some of the area. Down here you can see nothing is really exposed but maybe just a little bit. Then they start to excavate a little bit more and then a little bit more as they get down and see more bones and continue along this whole wall. They've excavated back farther and farther. According to the plaque here it's estimated that over 500 dinosaur skeletons have been found in this area. That's just astounding. Plus there were some other smaller animals but mostly the small animals were destroyed by the water flow. Really just the larger animals survived. The larger animal bones survived or skeletons survived. This map behind me shows some of the complete skeletons that were excavated from this quarry and what museums they were moved to. So very likely if you've seen a dinosaur skeleton in a museum it came from here. So what was your thoughts? I thought that was really, it was really interesting. Yeah, it was really interesting. I don't think we've ever seen anything like it. Yeah, I mean I think we've seen dinosaur bones in museums but to really see them still in the ground where they're discovered. That was kind of cool. Yeah, it was. We're taking a drive through the park and this is the Split Mountain Spur off the main road and I think this behind me is Split Mountain. That section right there. And this goes down to another campground area and it looks like where they launch river boats. I thought that was kind of neat. The road through the park is turned into a dirt road and we're in this section where there's petroglyphs. And so we're going to take a walk over here. We're right here, so we're going to take a walk over and check them out. This is a Josie Bennett Morris homestead. Now Josie Bennett Morris lived here from the age of 40 until her death at 90. This is way off grid. No electricity, no plumbing. She literally lived off the land in this home. And at that time when she moved out here she was divorced and her children were grown. Now she did have family in the area that would come out and visit but she irrigated the land, grew her own vegetables and food, had her own animals, and that's how she lived. So you talk about people today who want to get off grid. It's nothing new. She was doing this back in, gosh, let's see, it would have been 1914 when she moved out here. She lived here for 50 years until 1964. So if you think boondocking is rough, try this. The Green River Campground, surprisingly enough, is right on the Green River. If I turn the camera around this way back, you're going to see there's an amphitheater right here where they have ranger talks during the night. And this is the Green River. This flows all the way down into the Colorado at Canyonlands. And this is a very high-flowing river, especially this time of year. This is springtime. They've had a good winter snowmelt that's running off. But it is also managed. They're up the river a bit. There's a dam and reservoir, and they manage the river flow. Now we're heading there next, so we're going to get an idea to see how full that reservoir is, because I'm guessing it's probably pretty full. They warn you about this to don't swim in this river. I actually wouldn't even kayak. This river is probably moving to 15 to 20 miles per hour. It is moving fast. It doesn't look like it. They said there's a lot of undercurrent in here, and there's a lot of rocks that you're not going to see if you went in the river and taken down it. So you've got to be very careful here. But it is a pretty cool river. They do have river rafting on this river. They seem to do it up a little farther where there's some rapids, and they take out just above the campground here. So one of the other scenic things here at Dinosaur Campground, or Dinosaur National Monument and Green River Campground. This is the only water supply here at the campground. There is a spigot about every restroom. They ask you not to attach water hoses to it. So you need to come here with a full water tank for your stay, and bring maybe some water jugs or something that you can refill here. One thing you're going to notice here is there's no hookups. And that's because Green River is a totally dry camping. You do not have electricity, you do not have water, and there is not a dump station. So when you come to Green River, make sure that your freshwater tank is full, your waste tanks are empty, and have some type of electrical backup like solar or whatever you use. We found that this worked very well. The other thing that we were really surprised when we were here is the cell service is great if you have AT&T. If you have Verizon, it's zero. But AT&T, we were able to stream with. So even though we didn't have the hookups, we still were comfortable. Well, we're ready to leave Green River Campground. And Dinosaur National Monument. And what did you think of Dinosaur National Monument? I thought it was pretty cool. We've never been to this area of Utah. And, yeah, it was very interesting, very educational, and it's a pretty place. Yeah, I mean, this park isn't too big. So you can get around it and view it all. But it was nice to stay here. The campground was nice. It's all boondocking, and it's only $18 a night, plus your admission to the park itself. But if you've got a National Parks Pass, then that covers the admission to the parks, and it reduces your camping to $9 a night, which is really reasonable. Oh, okay. Well, then, yeah, it was really cheap. Yeah, it was a good way to save a couple bucks this trip. So we'll be on our way. We have one more, two more campgrounds? Yeah, we're only a week away from essentially the – I don't want to say it's the destination, but it's the point of this trip. Right. We've still got a lot to go and see on the way back that we haven't been to before. So it's not the end. It's just what our ultimate goal in this trip was. Yeah. So let's get on our way. All right, let's get going. Okay. Oh, so guys, if you like this video, what should they do? Please give it a thumbs-up and subscribe to our channel, Zephyr Travels. Hit that bell for notifications. We post new videos on a weekly basis, and we'd love to have you follow along. So until next time, we will see everyone down the road. All right, guys, take care. Bye.