Dry Bones

July 23-24

We crossed about 200 miles of Wyoming on Interstate 80 on Saturday, the 23rd. These I understand are the High Plains, a sea of rolling grass surrounded by mountains. Some peaks in the distance still held patches of snow.

The route is dotted with small towns that began life, like Cheyenne and Laramie, as railroad stops.

There is a town called Sinclair, Wyoming, and when a sign came up for it, I briefly thought: Wouldn’t that be funny if it’s where Sinclair gasoline comes from.

Yeah, well, it’s funny. A billboard on the highway leading up to town welcomes you to Sinclair, home of the West’s most modern refinery.

Somewhere near Rawlins, Wyoming, we crossed the Great Divide. In one of his works, probably “A River Runs Through It,” Norman Mclean reminisces about his days working with the U.S. Forest Service in the Rocky Mountains.

It was common practice to stop on the Great Divide and take a piss so half would go to the Pacific and the other half to the Atlantic.

Somewhere else there is a fair-size rail depot in sight of the highway. Next to it is a warren of cattle pens, surrounded by old-fashioned rail fences. 

There was a guy who may have been fixing a gate, but no animals in sight. 

We took a break from I-80 at Red Desert, mainly to see the desert, but all we found was a short road that led to two private drives. 

We took an exit a little farther along and found Sweetwater County Road 67. Like most county roads, it is dirt and gravel.

We traveled on it for about a half-dozen miles through an almost featureless landscape of low scrub. It was beautiful in its own way, but no place where I wanted to spend a lot of time.

We couldn’t find the Red Desert, but we got a good view of Table Rock in the distance.

On the way back, we stopped to photograph two pronghorns on a hill. They watched us while we were stopped and then spooked when I started to move the car. 

They took off, but not a useful way if I intended them harm. They both crossed the road in front of the car. I had to stop to avoid hitting them.

It was somewhere on this section of I-80 that we crossed the Great Divide a second time. The elevation surprised me: about 7,000 feet the first time and 6,900 the second. I expected it to be much higher.

We left the Interstate at Rock Springs—well named, because it is a place of steep rocky cliffs. It may have a spring, too.

The road to Vernal, Utah, follows a spectacular canyon named Flaming Gorge by John Wesley Powell, the geologist who first mapped it. The cliff faces are colored by red limestone.

The Green River runs through it.

Much of the road, U.S. 191, runs without guardrails over a precipitous drop of a million feet or so. The scale of it all is astonishing.

The river is dammed near the foot of the gorge in Utah. There’s a hydroelectric plant and people boating on the water supply.

Toward the end of the drive, in Utah, we stopped at an overlook designed to show what a good neighbor a mining company can be. Simplot built a shelter on a knoll that overlooks a colorful valley and the company’s phosphate mine.

Vernal is a town of some size. It’s smaller than Laramie, which has about 30,000 people. Vernal and the town next to it have about 12,000.

There are eight or nine places here that sell beer—with lots of restrictions. You can’t buy a beer in a restaurant unless you order food to go with it.

Dinner at the Quarry Steakhouse was no problem. I had a rib-eye. Joanna had grilled halibut. Baked potato, grilled vegetables, Caesar salad: a good time was had by all.

I had an all right IPA and a lightweight (4.0 abv) amber, called Evolution and dedicated to Charles Darwin, that was surprisingly tastier than the IPA. After seeing the begging ape in Laramie, I was ready for Evolution.

When I got there, they told me they couldn’t sell me bottles to go. I could buy 3.2 beer in any number of stores. 

What? They don’t sell real beer in bottles?

The liquor stores all closed at 7. 

But this is Saturday—Sorry. I forgot where I am.

For some reason, they were in a hurry to hand me the check and didn’t even ask if I wanted another pint. Maybe they can only serve two to a customer. If there is a restriction like that, I can get around it by ordering one beer for me and one for Joanna.

Joanna doesn’t drink much beer. She just sips now and then from my glass.

Anyhow, I wanted at least one more. So we stopped at Swain Brothers, in a Quality Inn not from from where we are staying. 

I ordered a pale ale, and knowing I had to buy food, asked to see the dessert menu.

There was a moment of consternation. A voice off-stage said, no, the law says it has to be an entree. 

So much for that. We left for the hotel.

Sunday the 24th brought us to the reason that we are putting up with Utah for a couple of days.

About a half-hour ride from the hotel is the Dinosaur National Monument. There are dinosaur remains all over this region of the country, but I can’t imagine any place with so many packed together in one small area.

There are stegosaurus bits and pieces of T. rex, neck bones, leg bones, foot bones, none connected anymore and many jumbled. 

The fossil quarry, as it is called, is on a mountainside that was once the bed of a shallow stream. The dinosaurs used to water there.

When the river dried up, so did the dinosaurs. They died and sank to the bottom, pretty much one on top of the other. Sand and other sediment covered them and they fossilized.

The place has been mined for fossils since 1909. The paleontologist who led the first excavations was from the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. He was in charge in 1915 when Woodrow Wilson declared the spot a national monument.

The paleontologist gave his name as Earl Douglas. Sounds made up to me.  Could it be an alias conjured by someone who read Shakespeare’s history plays? Maybe by somebody in witness relocation?

I don’t know, now. I’m just saying.

Douglas mined a lot of fossils which have found their way to museums and other research institutions around the world. There are plenty left in the ground at the site.

He suggested that they be left in the ground but exposed to view, and protected from the weather by some kind of housing. The housing today is the Quarry Exhibit Hall. 

We could have taken what looks like an interesting trail to get there, but it was a hundred degrees out today, so Joanna and I weren’t about to try it. We saw some kids walking it later, and they were climbing the hill just fine. 

We took the trolley from the visitor center.

The exhibit hall is a two-story structure built against the hillside that contains the fossils. You walk up a ramp that brings you to the top floor first.

When we walked in, my jaw may have dropped. At first I thought it was a reproduction of some kind. But they say it’s the real thing.

I never before saw so many oversize bones piled up like that. Here and there were strings of vertebrae. In one or two instances a trail of neck bones ended with a skull.

At this point, the displays of complete dinosaur skeletons in the exhibit hall were anti-climactic. After all, they were merely casts of the original fossils, which are someplace else.

The wall had the real thing, just the way extinction left them.

We also took a road that led us to an ancient petroglyph site. The stone  has a red veneer, which can be scraped away to reveal a pale underlayer. Perfect for scratching cartoons on rocks. They were inside a shallow cave that had a protective stone wall outside to keep us from getting too close. 

Some of the figures may have had pigment added. 

The glyphs are attributed to a group called the Fremont people, who are believed to be the ancestors of today’s Ute Indians, for whom Utah is named.

Outside the cave was another set of drawings, an owl on a limb and the carved name “Murray,” may be that was a common given name among the Fremont people. I don’t know.

On the way to the Dinosaur National Monument, I had seen a billboard advertising a liquor store with a large selection of beer in Dinosaur, Colorado. I checked the map, and Dinosaur is about 20 miles east of the park.

This was Sunday in Utah. I had no idea what to expect. Twenty miles? Hell, that’s next door.

Dinosaur is about a quarter mile long on U.S. 40 and a block deep on the south side. There is no north side.

And that made it easy to find the liquor store, where I bought a six-pack of Soul Shakin’ imperial red ale. OK, now I was ready for whatever Utah could throw at me.

I had wanted to go to Vernal Brewing Company’s pub, but it’s closed on Sunday. Another pub, Dinosaur Brew Haus, has little Web presence—no menu, no hours posted. I found a number and called. Yes, they were open.

They had a few good brews, but the only food was fried or in sandwiches. 

Joanna’s pulled pork sandwich was all right. So was my Philly steak.

They had a few Vernal Brewing selections on tap. I had the Pilgrimage extra pale ale. It was surprisingly mild. Not bad, but not what I expected. It was almost Pilsner blond: extra pale, not extra ale.

My second beer, also made in Utah, was Squatters Suspension pale ale. It was better, delivering more hops and more body.

Soul Shakin’ is made in Palisade, Colorado. I’ve just finished my second can and plan to open a third.

Bless my soul.

And yours.

Good night, all.

Harry