Twilight Over Dinosaur National Monument

I was expecting to camp out in Dinosaur National Monument on my first night out. Failing to check up on the weather though, I was greeted to the Visitor’s Center closed down for the season and warnings outside of it that the road to the only campground from that point is impassible if it gets wet at all. It was a clear day, but I know how quickly that can change. Despite waking up to a clear sky the following morning, I opted to play it safe and camped on BLM land literally right off of the highway heading into Dinosaur National Monument, which is technically part of the monument.

With my road trip focusing primarily on the southwest, I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of time in northern Colorado anyway. Thus, I found a site just 10 or 15 minutes from the main highway so that I could be on my way once I awoke. In seeing southern Wyoming and northern Colorado again, I realized I’m going to have to make that whole area its own road trip.

I’m currently in Cortez, Colorado on a work day taking care of a few things. In addition to Dinosaur National Monument (sort of), I’ve also stopped at Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park as well as Mesa Verde National Park. I hadn’t been to Black Canyon before, and it was definitely a great surprise and a beautiful sight to see, though the photography unfortunately won’t reflect it. I was struggling that day so I don’t think I got the shots I was hoping for. My next blog post will most likely be on Mesa Verde though. I really enjoyed my time there.

Another nice surprise early in the trip was seeing wildlife bridges being built between Bondurant and Pinedale, Wyoming. It’s a huge deer and pronghorn area and to see roughly ten wildlife bridges going up in that area really made my day.