Dinosaur National Monument - Day 2

Another beautiful day on the Canyon side of Dinosaur National Monument.

As we were driving to Echo Park Road, there was a deer in the middle of Harpers Corner Road - by the time we got the camera up, he/she was over to the side of the road...

A reminder - I posted this warning yesterday about the road that we were about to take.

The first part of the road was very steep and multiple switchbacks, but then it just was a gravel road with some really rough spots and beautiful scenery.

Rocks and rocks and rocks.

A little over halfway down, we came to the remains of Chew ranch

Some of the corrals

An outbuilding

I figured this was their RV!

The house

continuing on down the road...

Mountains all around us...

We stopped to see some petroglyphs

They were *way* up there...

Zoomed in - can you see them?

Zoomed in even more - now, hopefully, you can see them!

It is probably good that they are up so high so they cannot be (easily) damaged by folks having access to them.

The sound of the stream running just below our feet was so refreshing!

This rock face was so interesting...

Dwayne got out to take close up pictures...

Gives you perspective of how large that is!

Some of Dwayne's close ups of the rock face...

He said that a lizard was following him as he walked along the rock face - can you see it in the center of this picture?

It looks like that part could split right off! It even looks like there is a wedge in the gap to separate it!

The lizard is also in this picture - but it is easier to see him by his shadow right near the middle of the picture.

Next we came to Whispering Cave... it was so cool (in temperature) as we were going up to it and inside it.

 Remember a couple of pictures ago I mentioned that it looked like that part of the rock face could split off at any time? Well... I was outside Whispering Cave, and Dwayne was inside... we were wondering what the "whispering" part of the name implied - Dwayne said that he thought it meant that the wind would be heard "whispering" through it... and just then, we heard what sounded like a great wind! Dwayne thought it was from the cave, but I was outside and could tell that it was coming from along the road where we had just driven - I saw a plume of dust rising - a part of the rock face (on the other side of the road from the part that I thought might split off!) had fallen. What a noise it made! We had driven past folks who were walking along the road just before that. Later, when we were leaving from the Echo Park area, we saw them walking back - they were camping at Echo Park. They saw the part of the rock come down, but weren't quick enough to get pictures. The lady said that she jumped about 4 feet in the air (she may have been exaggerating). Turned out that they are from Burleson, TX - traveling and camping on a motorcycle.

We continued looking around in Whispering Cave - it wasn't very deep, and those rocks that look like they are just held up there with friction and could fall at any time didn't give me much confidence of my safety!

Looking down the road to Echo Park from Whispering Cave.

Dwayne was standing in Whispering cave when he took this picture - the dark at the top is the mouth of the cave.

The rock above the cave appeared to be fluted.

Making our way down to Steamboat Rock at Echo Park.

Isn't it beautiful?

The story is that early explorers named the area Echo Park because their voices would echo off of Steamboat Rock, but we did not experience that.

The Green and Yampa rivers join just around the right side of Steamboat Rock and they become the Green River which continues on from this point to eventually empty into the Colorado.

As we were coming up from Echo Park, we could proceed back 8 miles to Harpers Corner Road (the way we came) or go left along Yampa Bench Road - after 42 miles of a gravel/dirt road, we could get back to US 40. We had thought about doing that, but, our trip to Echo Park took us about 2 hours, and we had had some difficulty getting the Jeep out of 4WD Low on the way down. We didn't want to risk being even more miles away from a highway and experience a problem with the Jeep.

This is the "bench" area. It looks like a flat grassland.

Heading back up...

A small canyon we passed on the way.

As we were proceeding up the road, this warning light came on - we looked it up and the manual indicated that the transmission was hot and we should shift into neutral and idle until it went off. We did that, and made it a little further and the light came on again - neutral and idle and it cleared - one more time it happened before we got back up to Harpers Corner Road. We had been going at slow speed for about 3 hours (with a few stops), and the light came on when we were on the last climb out which was pretty steep. Once we got onto Harpers Corner Road, the transmission shifted just fine and we had no more issues. We tried checking the transmission fluid in the Jeep when we got back to the bus, but it is indicated as not a customer maintenance item. We were so glad that we didn't take the Yampa Bench Road.

A picture taken while we were stopped letting the transmission cool down! God let us enjoy His creation even while we were trying to ensure we did not damage His Jeep!

Another deer along Harpers Corner Road on our way back to the bus.

I wanted some pictures to be able to post on an RV site to show how beautiful our campsite is - so a couple of pictures of Miss Doozie...

We are just outside the boundary of the National Park. I believe that this is BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land. I asked at the Canyon Visitor's Center when we stopped there and the lady indicated that it was ok to camp along CO 16, which is the road that we took off of Harpers Corner Road to get to our site.