Rex and Nancy's Travels - "ALL WHO WANDER ARE NOT LOST" - JRR Tolkein

Our refrigerator is empty and the cupboards are getting bare so we headed to Vernal, UT on Wednesday morning to go grocery shopping.  Before we went shopping we drove to Dinosaur National Monument which is along the Colorado/Utah border East of Vernal.   Our first stop was at the Quarry Visitor Center where we boarded a shuttle that took us to the Quarry Exhibit Hall.  Paleontologist Earl Douglass discovered and began excavating fossils at the quarry for the Carnegie Museum in 1909.   Dinosaur National Monument was established in 1915 to preserve the quarry.  The Quarry Exhibit Hall is built around the quarry which displays many of the fossils found here (some still remain where they were found).     The display of fossils found in the quarry was very impressive.   After taking the shuttle back to the Quarry Visitor Center we drove on the Cub Creek Road and followed the Tour of the Tilted Rocks....

We drove to “Old Valdez” about 4 miles from current Valdez. The 1964 earthquake totally destroyed the harbor at Old Valdez and did a lot of damage to the town. The town was moved to more stable ground. We stopped at the Crooked Creek Salmon Spawning Viewing Area where we watched pink and chum salmon spawning in Crooked Creek. We drove the Dayville Road – a short scenic road along Valdez Bay. Where Solomon Gulch Creek empties into Valdez Bay we could see so many pink and silver salmon that the water was churning with them. These salmon were much bigger than the ones we saw at Crooked Creek. This is a good spot to view bears, eagles, seals and sea lions feeding on the salmon. We watched a sea lion feeding a short distance from the shore but no bears. We also saw a number of sea otters playing. This road ends at the Alyeska Pipeline Terminal and we watched an oil tanker come up the bay and dock at the terminal.