Campground Surprises at Dino

We had a long travel day coming into Dinosaur National Monument from Moab, with having to get fresh water, dump waste tanks, buy groceries, stop for lunch, cross a high mountain pass, yadda yadda. And, once we finally got to the monument, it was time to find a place to camp; you can’t do dispersed camping within the monument, but there’s BLM land in strips on its border.

Tracy had picked several possible spots, but once we got to them, it was harder than we expected to tell where the exact monument border was, and then signs had been set in some spots saying the area was closed to camping due to a migration. They actually didn’t look official BLM, and I couldn’t see any migration alert when I looked online. Which kind of points to them being bogus. But, the dates on them barring camping were before Memorial Day, so if they’d been placed by jackasses trying to keep the spots for themselves, chances are they’d want them for the holiday. Still, the risk was too great: you do not want to leave your home where you might have to move it in an emergency or where it will piss off some camper so determined that they’d leave bogus signs.

So, after our last-ditch effort of unhitching and leaving the trailer in one of these spots for just a bit while we drove the jagged, dirt road ahead to find any site at all, we gave up, hitched back up, and pulled into one of the few official campgrounds within the monument. It’s actually not a bad campground, right on the Green River, but 2/3rds of the sites were by reservation only, which left few very campsite choices for us. And you know how I feel about campgrounds in the first place, even when we score a great site.

Which is all a long explanation for why I’m documenting the nice surprises we’ve enjoyed this week in or near our campground.

Over the weekend, our neighbors consisted of a pair of grandparents who got dressed in their tent that looks right at our site (dude, zip your tent up, please), with their talk-on-the-phone-loudly children, their crying-and-running grandchildren, and their two dogs, so we headed to nearby Vernal to fill a propane tank and our beer/pizza tanks. My pizza tank had long been empty, and this one did the trick.

Another day, we checked out the only other campground nearby, just to see if it was an option, and it turns out to be group sites only, no doubt for all the river’s white-water rafters. But look at these cliff swallows we found nearby brooding on eggs. My pictures here don’t show how many there were, but in the pic on the left you can see that each nest always had one bird in it, and the nesting pair switched in a flurry of birds, as kind of can be seen on the right. It looked like chaos to my camera, but they all knew exactly what they were doing. We stood for a long time watching them switch places, like a swarm enacting some pattern only the individuals know.

On two mornings, I walked from our campground to the group campground along the Green River, expecting to see nothing but lovely river views. I did get those, but also flower after flower beside the trail.

And then I saw this fella, sliding across the trail in front of me. He was young, and baby rattlers have less control over their venom than adults, so their bites are deadly even faster.* Glad I saw him and stayed clear.

• Edited to add: I have since learned from a park ranger that this is a midget faded rattlesnake, about “5–30 times more lethal” than other Western Rattlesnake species. The ranger told me that if I’d been bitten, I’d have had to be taken to a hospital via helicopter immediately. Double yikes.

Best surprise 👆🏼 I was sitting out on the river one morning and had a chat with a young couple who’d walked out to see what all the noise was (it was a herd of sheep who’d come down to drink, with lots of lambs). We talked tattoos (they had lots; I forget I do, too), New Mexico (they’re from the Southwest but were unfamiliar with some of my favorite places, and vice versa), and their upcoming wedding. Nice little chat.

A few minutes later, the young woman comes back to the beach to hand me this watercolor she’d created yesterday, from the spot we’d been standing on, of an isolated rain across the river. It’s quite lovely! More so as a gesture, even. If you’re reading this, Hi Carmen!

And, if we play our cards right, we’ll be hanging out with Tom and Amy tonight, who pull in to this campground the day before we leave. Another surprising benefit of campground life!

Edited to add: We did!