Dinosaur National Monument Fossil Quarry

Today we visited the newly renovated fossil quarry.   A ranger leads you up to the quarry from the visitor's center in a car caravan.   You are up there for about 40 minutes.   What was so surprising was that the paleontologists are no longer working on the rock quarry and the lab inside the building is gone now.  It just doesn't seem right not to have the excavation of dinosaur fossils going on right before your eyes.  Where are the guys in the white coats and hard hats with the drills and picks?   We visited this building in the 60's and the 70's and didn't realize that bentonite clay was causing the cracks and the windows to separate from the structure.  There is only one paleontologist there now and he works offsite.   The ranger did tell us that there are building a site by the field house in Vernal that will house a lab for extracting the fossils from the rock.

After a stop at the visitor center gift shop, we drove to the Colorado side of the monument and drove up to Canyon Overlook.  We had our picnic lunch here.  We were still 15 miles from the end of the road at Harper's Corner and wanted to stop by the visitor's center on the canyon side.  Unfortunately when we got down there, it was closed and not opening until May 15. 

Vernal is booming with the quarry opening again and the oil and gas business on the rise.  The Marriott was sold out and they told a prospective guest that they were even oversold.  A Town Place Suite was being constructed next door.    The Best Western where we stayed in 1969 and 1978 is still there.  

 The Newly renovated Quarry house.

 This was cool.  You can now stand by the wall of fossils and touch then.   Larry at our picnic table at Canyon Overlook.

 How the quarry looked in 1958.  The round structure was the gift shop.  It is no longer at this site.  Some of the fossils that were left on the rock site.

 Below is view looking into the canyon.

Tonight we are staying in Steamboat Springs and our dinner here was a 100% better that our dinner in Vernal.  I may even have to make a comment on Trip Advisor about them.  Vernal still doesn't have any good places to eat, other that fast food or the Utah favorite, a steak house.