Day 76 - Ferron to Heber, Utah

Today the phrase, "If you're not outside you comfort zone, you're not having an adventure" definitely came into play. I thought we were on track to leave our camp site in Herron, Utah, and drive eight miles into the Utah desert to see a dig site and museum devoted to the excavation of dinosaurs. We've passed this site on a couple of other vacations, always deciding to skip it since it lay at the end of a dirt road that accessed a rather remote location. Today, we had made a special effort to camp nearby the access road. We were ready to give it a try this time.

Here's what the Bureau of Land Management says about the site: "The Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry contains the greatest accumulation of Jurassic dinosaur bones in the world. Since the 1920s, paleontologists have collected more than 12,000 fossil bones at the quarry. At least 70 individual dinosaurs died here about 145 million years ago during the Jurassic Period, and their jumbled skeletons were covered by sediments of the Morrison Formation. The remains of the carnivorous dinosaur Allosaurus are unusually common, and visitor center displays include an Allosaurus skeleton. Visitors can also view part of the quarry that has been enclosed for specimen protection. There are restrooms, picnic tables, and self-guided trails. The Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry was designated BLM’s first National Natural Landmark in 1966."

The BLM site further states: "Closer to the quarry, room-size boulders are strewn across the land. Ridges and steep-sided hills contain evidence that dinosaurs once walked here, and ranger guides lead the hardiest visitors on “track tours” to dinosaur footprints recorded in the rock. Large and small hoodoos dot the landscape along the way to the bones and tracks. Reddish barite roses—barium-rich mineral crystals in the shape of flowers—litter the ground in places, giving scientists clues to what the climate was like when allosaurs prowled ancient flood plains."

If you follow all the way down on the BLM web page you eventually discover that, while it's open every day of the week during the summer, it's only open on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday Labor Day to Memorial Day. If you're at all familiar with the calendar, you know that Memorial Day has NOT occurred yet.

For some reason we did not discover the BLM web page until later today. But anticipating that there might be things we had to know before venturing out into the desert, Concetta and I stopped by the local Forestry office this morning to ask for a map and, hopefully, to learn about anything we needed to know.

When I entered the office I asked the lady behind the counter if she had a map to the dinosaur quarry. She looked at me like I had just asked her who had actually discovered America since Columbus had been disqualified. Yes, one of those looks. Fortunately, a ranger just happened to be entering the office when I asked my question and when the secretary turned to him with a, "What the heck is he talking about" look on her face, the ranger said, yes we have the maps.

But then the ranger scowled at the map rack for many moments. Finally he said, "Guess we're out. But it's easy to find. You just drive north on Route 10 and turn when you see the sign."

You may have noticed that the ranger did NOT mention to me that the Dinosaur site was not open this time of year. That would have been nice. But with a song in my heart, I walked back to the rig and we set off to follow the ranger's directions.

The previous day I had happened to mention to our one-night landlord of the white hair and mustache that we intended to visit the dinosaur site. At the time he had told me to turn east when I saw the sign for the town of Cleveland and from then on the point-of-interest signs would guide us. As Concetta and I rode north, I began to think about the fact that the ranger had not mentioned turning toward Cleveland.

So it was that when we encountered said turnoff to Cleveland, we stopped and considered our next move. So far, motoring north on Utah Route 10, we had not seen any point-of-interest signs for the dinosaur quarry. I thought back to my conversation with the landlord, whose name was actually Jim. He seemed pretty emphatic that he knew how to get there. He even knew that the desert mileage was around 10.

"Okay," I said to Concetta, "let's take the turn to Cleveland and see what happens. It's only four miles out of our way."

As you might guess, the ranger was wrong and Jim was right. The Cleveland Dinosaur Quarry was reached by driving to Cleveland and entering the desert road from there. Maybe we should have been leery at that point. Maybe there was more to know that we hadn't encountered. But the lure of dinosaurs mega millions of years old was just too strong. I mashed the gas pedal and we were off.

At first the road to the Quarry was paved. Wow! We thought. Maybe folks were wrong about the road being dirt. But before we'd gone a mile the nice, paved road turned to washboard dirt. And then we encountered that memorable sign. It read: "Cleveland Dinosaur Quarry, 15 miles." Oh, Lord, we were really in for it.

Since the ride promised to be so lengthy, I decided to push the envelope. I had always heard that if you push the speed up over forty or fifty, you don't feel the washboard as bad. This I decided to do. And I can say that to an extent the belief is correct. You can fly along at forty or fifty -- or even sixty -- and the ruts don't bother you as much. It can get a bit dicey as you fly up and over hills, swerve around hillocks, and drop into deep depressions when you're booming along at that speed.

The good thing is that we got to the site in record time without encountering a speeding vehicle in the opposite direction, banging into one of the many cows that reposed beside the track, or losing control on one of the many blind curves. The bad new is, when we got to within ONE mile of the dinosaur site we encountered a LOCKED gate. Big yellow pipes blocked the road, locked together with a big, brass padlock.

We had come to the end of our pilgrimage and were brought up short just one mile from our goal. We thought of walking, Concetta even started out to see if she could spy the museum building anywhere within range, but only empty road appeared as she crested the next hill.

As for me, I decide that since I couldn't access the official site, I was going out into the bush to find my own damn dinosaur, or at least a some pretty rocks I could carry off since no one was around to prevent me from doing so.

I did spend much time wandering amongst the sandy wash alongside which we had parked. The geology was exciting, to say the least, but I found no solidified raptor tracks or anything of the kind. But I did find some very pretty rocks which went into my pockets. And yes, I did watch out for snakes, scorpions, and the like. But I just found our place of marooning just so very fascinating that I couldn't help but wander into the desert to see what I could see. Because of my rock collecting foray, I decided not to be overly irritated over missing what promised to be a very exciting archeological adventure. We're just going to have to come back someday.

The rest of the day was decidedly anticlimactic. We found our way back out of the desert wasteland, motored north toward Price, Utah, and performed the mundane task of shopping at Wallyworld. We even had lunch in the Wallyworld parking lot, not something we do normally.

From Price we motored north until we reached Route 191, which branched off Utah Route 6 just north of the town of Helper. From there we did a lot of Mountain climbing as we clawed our way to an elevation over 9,000 feet. Along the way we saw some fascinating mountain scenery, though we never found a convenient place to stop and photograph it.

The town of Helper, Utah, got its name in an interesting fashion. Here's what I found on the web: "Helper is located approximately 120 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, Carbon County, Utah. Known as the "Hub of Carbon County," and situated seven miles north of Price, the county seat, Helper has always reflected an ethnically diverse population, with southern and eastern European groups rising to positions of prominence within the community.

After the arrival of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railway in 1881-82, Helper began to develop as a population center. By 1887 the D&RGW had erected some twenty-seven frame residences, with more built later in the year. This was done in anticipation of making Helper a freight terminal upon the changing of the line from narrow to standard gauge, which began in 1889. Here, "helper" locomotives would stand in readiness to aid trains traveling up the steep grade to Soldier Summit, thus the name Helper."

This whole area is interesting to me because my mother's family comes from here. My maternal grandmother was born in Orangeville, Utah, in 1880. Her birthing place was a crude cabin dug out of the side of a hill. Later, when she was married, she ran a boarding house in the town of Colton, just west of Helper. Still later, she and my grandfather, Frank, moved up the canyon from Colton to the mining town of Clear Creek. There my mother was born in 1924 during a spring blizzard.

At the end of our rainbow today was the mobile home camp of "Country Estates" in Heber, Utah. I knew that there were a couple of RV parks in Heber, but upon closer examination of the guide book, it appeared that the parks were some distance into the mountains. So when we ran across this mobile home park advertising that they took overnighters, it appeared to be a no-brainer. We'd just stay here.

This lasted until we got to the manager's door, whereupon we encountered a sign which said, "We're not home. Park anywhere you like, and put the normal fee in an envelope. We could see, quite close to the manager's mobile, a collection of empty RV sites that seemed to be complete with water, sewer, and electrical. Okay, so we carefully backed the rig up, made a U-turn, and entered one of the sites. While Concetta was checking the level, I scouted to see if everything did, indeed, seem to be present that we would need.

After looking at all the utilities, I decided that perhaps a couple of sites to the south might be better for us. I was just in the process of hooking up when a young hispanic man approached and informed me that unfortunately the electric did not work in the entire central section at which I hoped to park. "Over there," he said, pointing to a site a bit to the northeast. "Over there the electric works."

"Thanks," I told him, and moved the rig to the spot he indicated. Only problem, while the water and electric worked, the sewer was a sort of floppy pipe laying on the ground. Once upon a time it had obviously been hooked to a mobile home, as a ten-foot length of pipe lay nearby. But the point at which the pipe exited the ground did not contain the normal screw connection to which I could hook my rig's sewer line.

Still, it was a nice level-ish site, though I had to run the rear wheels up on blocks, and "most" of the utilities would be easy to access. The water pipe lacked a shutoff handle, but I could accomplish that with my pliers. The electrical looked a little bedraggled, but it seemed to work okay. Only the sewer gave me pause. But after a time I was able to jury-rig a connection with Bungie cords, wooden blocks, a steel tub, and two pieces of plastic gutter material that seemed to work, though Rube Goldberg would be a dandy description for it.

Even though the camp is a little "down at the heels," and many of the resident RVs have been here so long that they're being absorbed into the soil, I've found that people have gone out of their way to be friendly and neighborly. Aside from the two chaps who immediately came over when we arrived, a moment ago, a string bean of a fellow came to the door and wanted to know if he could help me figure out how to pay for the site. I told him I had called the assistant manager, who just at that moment walked up to collect the check. Once the Assistant Manager had left, Everett stayed around to chat. I immediately pegged him for having been born in Alabama, or at least somewhere in the south, as his accent sounded so much like Forest Gump he could have been a voice coach for Tom Hanks.

"Where in the south are you from," I asked.

Everette shook his head. "Born just down the road from here," he said. "But lots a folks tell me I sound like I'm from the south."

Since I had been wondering for a long time about the blue collar workers I'd seen who seemed to be permanently living in the RV parks, I decided to ask Everette. "If you don't mind me asking," I said, "how much does it cost to live here monthly."

"Four hundred dollars," Everette said, nodding his head all the while.

"Does that include the utilities," I asked.

"Nope," he said.

"But how do they charge?" I asked. "Wouldn't you have to have your own meter?"

"Yup," Everette said. "Mine's broke, though. Wires all hanging out."

"So, you don't have any electricity, then?

Everette shook his head side to side now. And then, by way of explanation, he said, "Got hurt awhile back. Couldn't work. Just got a new job this week."

"What do you do? I asked.

"Painter," he said simply.

"House painter?"

Everette nodded.

Ah," I said. "You work in Heber?"

"Park City, mostly," he said. "Cept, work's been slow."

"Probably pick up now that summer's here," I said, hoping to sound positive.

"Yup," He said. "Folks always wanting to paint something in Park City."

About then I had to tell Everette my dinner was ready, we shook hands, and he set off for his twenty-foot, green and white travel trailer. I watched him go until he disappeared inside, knowing that his life was obviously on the bitter edge of existence. Working as a house painter he certainly had no health insurance, no money put aside, no way to ride out the low spots. I wondered how many Everettes there were in this vast country of ours; how many in this very park.

That's when I decided to take a walk after dinner and really check out Everette's environment. He told me before left that the elevation here is about 5,500 feet. After taking my walk, I decided that you could do a lot worse than this wonderfully snug little valley amidst the towering Wasatch Range. Probably gets a little cold in the winter, but Everette told me the snow is not too bad. I bet summers are just downright pleasant. I'll have to come back someday and find out.