A neighbor in camp suggests we take the scenic route up through Caribou National Forest to Soda Springs to check out their geyser.  The road is gravel and graded dirt but not bad and the route is through rolling meadows mixed with thick stands of pine. It is ranch country.  Cattle are the main “wildlife” but we do see a golden eagle, a bald eagle, and the most unusual for us, a badger.  I guess they are pretty common but it is a rare sighting for us.

We get into to town just in time to see the geyser.  It erupts on the hour every hour for six minutes.  How can they be so precise?  It is actually an artesian spring that they have capped and put a solenoid valve on….tada, very predictable.  It has been a tourist attraction since in 1937 a couple of fellows looking to tap a spring for a swimming pool hit a gas pocket and blew out the spring.  It flooded the town a couple days then all agreed it had to be plugged.  Not long after, the “captive” geyser attraction was born.  It is cool.

There is another spring in town, Hooper Spring. It is naturally flowing mineral water that emerges into a protective stone spring house providing all who wish the opportunity to sample its healing waters.  We do.  It tastes salty but not bad.  The local thing seems to be to bring a water bottle and powdered flavoring and make your own soda.   Must be ok, lots of kids are sipping it.

Soda Springs was also a site for the Ground Observer Corp in the 1950s.  We checked out a reproduction of the little kiosk volunteers manned to watch the skies to alert of any foreign incursion into US airspace.  There is report of one false alarm that got a domestic flight grounded but no evidence of any actual threat to national security.  Still, it is an obviously proud civic memory.

Lunch at A&W then we take the shorter, highway route back home.

Darn, another equipment problem.  We are maybe two miles from camp and the low-pressure indicator comes on.  Just annoying at first but we watch the pressure drop like a rock.  Within a couple minutes it reads 0.  Gotta stop, right here along the gravel road.  We have to get the user’s manual out to figure out the jack and the spare tire hanger but all is done in 10 minutes and we are safely home.  There is a big jagged hole right in the middle of the tread.  Looks like a new tire in our near future.

Ok, back up into the mountains.  We are heading for Summit View campground in Caribou Targhee National Forest above Soda Springs ID.   Highs in the mid-80s and nights in the 50s, Ahhhh.  In Jensen and Vernal we pass all manner of dinosaur statue and sculpture.  Whimsical to true-to-life-fierce they stand watch at business, playgrounds, and city halls.  Beyond town, the route from the National Monument passes through more of the dinosaur valley with signs along the way reminding us what layer of rock we are passing through and who/what lived there at the time it was deposited.  Then we wind along Flaming Gorge, rugged with pines standing in contrast to the redrock.  Things level out and we glide though wide rolling valleys with grasslands as far as we can see either way.  We experience a Wyoming traffic jam.  Four cowboys on horseback moving a herd of cattle across the road….they didn’t all want to go that way!   We turn west on I80 and things get less scenic.  We are crossing broad alkali flats dotted with mines and wells and crisscrossed by railroad tracks and gravel roads carrying a steady flow of huge dump trucks.  There are signs warning of road closures while traffic waits for quarry dynamite explosions.  It seems like even this barren arid land deserves better treatment than this.  Probably not going to happen though, these minerals and compounds are used in a lot of stuff we consider essential.  Turning west and north into Idaho we first find lush irrigated farmland including brilliant yellow fields of flowering canola plants.  Soon we are in pine covered mountains and find our way to camp.  It is pretty remote with the nearest town with any sort of services over 25 miles away.  No cell service at all in camp.  It is cool and beautiful here.  Tomorrow, we head out to explore.

We had our first hick-up towing the pick-up.   The battery was dead when we unhooked.  No big problem, we just jumped it with the motorhome.  Still, it was odd.  We found no obvious reason for the problem.

Today we head for Dinosaur National Monument, the Utah side, home of the Quarry Exhibit Hall.  We pass through miles of sage brush plain and make a steep switchback climb up a lush green valley then across Douglas Pass.  This north west corner of Colorado and even more so the neighboring Utah is cool terrain.  Enormous geologic uplift has tilted and deformed layer upon layer of sedimentary rock exposing bands of color cut through by ridges of sandstone.  Maybe not exactly beautiful but certainly amazing.

This end of the monument is all about dino bones.  Some 149 million years ago, a raging river carried and buried bones of at least 10 species of dinosaurs in this one valley.   It is the site of a huge dig that began in 1908.  Like at most digs, lots of bones have been removed and sent to various museums.  The cool thing here, the on-site exhibit is a section of the dig.  A vertical wall of earth with 1500 dinosaur bones all excavated to expose them but left in place, exactly as they were deposited millions of years ago.  One section of the wall still contains a nearly complete skeleton of a Camarasaurus, one of those long necked, long tailed planteaters. It is cool to try to spot all the pieces like a giant puzzle.  Plus, we get to touch actual dino bones.  Very cool.  Check it out.

We make a quick stop to check out pictographs and petroglyphs but save exploration of the rest of the monument for another, cooler time.  There is lots more to see besides dino bones.

We are spending the night in Green River campground here on the Monument.  Most of the sites are among majestic cottonwoods along the river bank. Late in the day clouds are building.  We can see sheets of rain reaching for the ground on nearby mountains along with flashes of lightning.  Occasionally a light sprinkle makes it to the ground here.  It is amazing to watch.  It reminds me of watching storms develop and approach in Nebraska when I was a kid. I still love it.  Just about dark a mule deer browses its way past our site between us and the river.  This is a dark sky park but it’s a bright half-moon and a there are still a few scattered clouds.  It is a beautiful night but too much light to find the Milky Way.  Another time.

Thankfully its only figurative pain but still…what a pain.  Kent pulled the crown off of a molar with the sticky chewy center of a tootsie pop.  The tooth already has a root canal so no physical pain but he is on the hunt for a dentist who can get him in and take care of it before he breaks the tooth or something.  Just two calls in and he is set with Ruby Canyon Dental in Grand Junction.  It’s a nice office with friendly staff and they soon find that yes, the tooth is still sound and they can do a same day crown replacement for just $1500.  We are wrapping our heads around the dollar amount while musing over the xrays they have up when we learn exactly how crowns are done.  Shazam, that little piece Kent saved the other day isn’t a broken piece, it’s the whole thing AND if it is not damaged, they can just glue it back in place. For about $250.  Well, we didn’t throw it away but its back at the motorhome an hour away.  There is a flurry of discussion among dentist and staff ending with the decision to reconvene tomorrow with the loose crown and make the call, new cap or reglue.  The short story, $275 and Kent is good to go.  The old crown is back in place.

Billed as ‘The largest’ or ‘One of the largest’ flat top mountains in the world, it is high at 10,000+ feet and it is huge.  It is also tree covered and dotted with hundreds of lakes, quite different from the vast high desert and the sage brush ranges flanking it on three of its sides far below.  We approach from the south up Colorado 65 on a steep climb of 6000 feet above the plains with our first stop the visitor center in Cedaredge then on to camp at Vega State Park. Kent is glad to just be pulling the little truck rather than the big trailer.  Once we reach the top, I am on wildlife watch.  They reintroduced moose here about 25 years ago and the herd now numbers in the 400s.  They also claim mule deer, elk, black bear and marmots.  It is wildflower season too so always something for me to watch for while Kent watches the road.  The route zig-zags between lakes in the center of the mesa.  It is a beautiful ride with amazing views.  Stops to explore further will wait until we safely settle the motorhome and are back out and about in the truck.

Now I’m a bit bummed.  We, more specifically I, completely misjudged the location of our camp.  Vega is all the way back down off the north side of the mesa and another 20 miles across the hot arid landscape. It is in the mid 90s when we get here.   Its just not what I’ve been imagining.  I thought I’d wake up early the next few mornings in the cool wilderness camp and just step out to watch for wildlife and relax in the evenings in that same setting.  Instead, it’ll be a long arduous drive we will make maybe once or twice.  Like I said, not what I have been envisioning.  On the bright side, our site is on the sunflower blanketed shore of a lovely little lake and we see deer, a falcon, and osprey plus a number of other familiar birds.