Bill-on-the-Hill

Mainly a travel day, so this will be short, with a minor rant along the way. No Web Site du Jour or photos, either. Just what is this world coming to?

The challenge for today was to make our way from Ouray, where we'd overnighted following a stint on the Million Dollar Highway, to Rock Springs, Wyoming, fitting in a stop for some hiking at Dinosaur National Monument. This isn't very far as the crow flies -- only 250 miles or so -- but as previously noted, the route taken by the driver in this part of the world is very different from that taken by a crow. This is very rugged country we're talking about. The driver must dodge all manner of challenging landscape that does not take kindly to having a road placed on top of it. It's also sparsely populated, placing a premium on keeping a full fuel tank and not doing anything likely to lead to a busted vehicle. Well, we're plenty experienced in traveling through country like that and knew where we were going, so what could go wrong? Right.

Getting to Dinosaur was straightforward, and we did fit in a short hike in the high, Colorado backcountry part of the park. Incidentally, visitors to Dinosaur should be aware of two things. First, on many of the trails, there's a fairly good chance you'll have them to yourself. This was Labor Day weekend, remember, and we didn't see a single person on the trail we used. I've never been on any other hike in the USA over Labor Day where that was true. In most regards, that's a good thing -- few people go hiking in the boonies and hope to see crowds -- but it does reinforce the message about being prepared. (Note, btw, that this all-by-yourself condition does not apply on the backcountry's most popular trail, at Harper Point, but even there you won't be waiting in line.) Second and less auspiciously (rant warning), the main reason for going to Dinosaur if you're not a hiker, namely to see the famous quarry with fossils still in place and exposed, is out of business for the time being. The building sheltering the quarry has been closed since last summer, for the simple reason that it's falling down. Allegedly this isn't a big surprise; it's been on shaky ground (literally) ever since it was built in the 1950s, and the previous time we were there, structural decay could be seen. I find it disgusting, though, that the National Park Service that at one time managed the world's best national park system could take -- nay, be forced to take -- the Third-Worldish position of simply waiting for the deterioration to get too severe to sustain, then just shutting the thing down. Something has happened to our priorities. To put things in perspective: Assuming that it might take as much as 5 million dollars to replace this structure with another one -- a gold-plated one -- the cost for doing it is, in round numbers, the same as it costs the country's armed forces to spend fifteen minutes in Iraq. But oh well.

There were some not-entirely-minor adventures of a route-finding nature between here and our destination, but I'll skip the details and simply say that we did straggle into Rock Springs around midnight, with a few drops of gas left in the tank. I repeat: this is not territory that you want to take chances in, and we had done exactly that, from several points of view. But all's well that ends well, so it's on to the fun stuff the next day, and in the next blog.