Yampa and Green rivers

It was around 5PM when we completed the tour in the dinosaur quarry. The sky finally cleared and we decided to reach one more destination before the darkness covered the Earth and forced us to find a hotel...

 

Dinosaur National Monument is a very interesting park. It has two entries which is not really unusual. But one of the entries is located in Utah and the second one in Colorado. There are some 30 miles between the entries but most interesting is that the West entry brings you to the Dinosaur quarry and there's nothing else here. If you enter the East entry (from Colorado) you find no fossils but can travel 20 miles and cross the border between states a few times. At the end of the road you can see two rivers - Yampa and Green River at the sides of the trail.

We stopped here and there on our way to the endpoint and found two very different rivers. Green River is surrounded by red-ish rocks and lush greens while Yampa banks are striped and mostly yellow. Interesting, huh? Also even the rain stopped, the clouds still were moving around and sometimes crossing the road and the surrounding valleys.

We stopped at the last viewpoint and hiked one mile to see the river's confluence. Actually you cannot really see where Yampa joins Green River (the confluence actually hidden under the impassible rock) but you can see both rivers along the trail and finally at some point both of them at the same time.

 

And the rocks surrounding the rivers are just amazing. I have never seen anything like that. The colors, the texture... everything is bizzard.

We hiked all the way to the end of the trail and turned back just in time. We were able to reach the parking lot while the light still helped us to see the trail. But driving back was a different story. The darkness fell down quickly and on our way back we literally saw nothing but some deer crossing the road here and there.

We were heading to our hotel when we stopped for gas and found two cars coming back from some adventure. Honestly, I have no idea where they found all this dirt and clay but it looked like they had a really good time exploring the dirty roads and looking for some troubles. ;)

Click here if you want to see the West part of the park and Dinosaur quarry - Meet the dinosaur...

Click here to see the Flaming Gorge with no sun to bright it up - Muted Flaming Gorge

Pictures were taken on May 24, 2015.