After watching church and having Mexican Food Sunday at Betto’s in Vernal, we drove into the Fossil Bone Quarry entrance to the park. Being Memorial Day, the park was really busy. We stopped at the visitor center, collected our 35thPassport Stamp, watched the park movie, did a little shopping at the gift store, and talked with the ranger to see what trails would be fun to hike and to check on the road conditions. The monument was first created in 1915 with 80 acres around the fossil bone quarry site. In 1938 it was expanded to include the Green River and Yamba River gorges.
We decided to skip the Fossil Bone Quarry since, due to the crowds, you had to take a shuttle to the quarry exhibit and there were kids EVERYWHERE! So we drove down the Cub Creek Road on the Tilted Rocks Tour (we bought the tour book in the store). The first stop on the road is Swelter Shelter where they found stone tools dating back 7000 years old and some interesting, but younger, pictographs and petroglyphs from the Fremont period. We stopped at several of the overlooks to take in the scenery and drove on to the Josie Morris Ranch. Josie began homesteading here in 1914 at age 40. She was rumored to be a friend of the outlaw Butch Cassidy (who’s Hole in the Wall gang would hideout in the nearby canyons). She lived a 19 century lifestyle in the twentieth century. She lived on the ranch until she passed away at age 86. After examining the ranch buildings, we hike up to the Box Canyon before heading back to the Wanderer for dinner.
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| Entrance Sign |
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| pictographs and petroglyphs from the Fremont period |
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| pictographs and petroglyphs from the Fremont period |
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| The Behemoth in Utah |
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| Split Mountain |
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| The wild flowers are starting to bloom |
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