Day 18: Saturday, May 29th, 2004

Arches to Dinosaurs to Glenwood Springs

By Jessica Castleberry

We woke up in the morning at Arches to rain—something unexpected in the desert. I had remembered hearing it at one point in the middle of the night, a-tapping on our tent, but I had wrongfully assumed the noise came from big grains of sand hitting the fly of our tent. The cool, wet morning was a pleasant surprise. Dave and Anna and I woke up to someone’s voice telling us it was time to rise and shine, and it took us a few minutes to mobilize. Lucky for us, Andy was outside our tent in a raincoat ready to help us unload, because when we tried to unzip our tent, we realized we had fallen victim to a prank that had been pulled on some of the guys earlier in the week: the ties to the zippers were knotted on the outside so that we were stuck where we were. Nothing quite like camping with a bunch of jerks, I mean jokers, to keep you on your toes.

Rain made the process of taking down camp a little tricky, but it wasn’t coming down too hard and the wind wasn’t too intense. Most of us were happy about this, although Ron was not so secretly wishing for more in order to witness a flash flood. Eventually we got all our stuff together and made our way in the van to Moab, where we hoped to find a spot to grab a hot breakfast. Unfortunately, Saturday mornings are busy in Moab, and all the places we tried to stop were absolutely packed. We decided to
continue down the road and start the long trip back east. We took Route 128, the scenic route, through Utah until we hit I-70. We made a few stops to check out the mighty Colorado River (and to look for signs of flooding) and to check out some outcrops. It was bizarre to remember that we were heading back east. Considering we had had our hearts set on a hearty breakfast and were denied it, we were all really hungry come lunch time. Ron chose an exit and we pulled into the parking lot for Starvin’ Arvin’s, but we realized once we got inside that today was not our day for quick meals: the wait was going to be at least 20 minutes. So, someone mentioned that there was a Wendy’s across the street, and for some reason
it appealed to nearly all of us, so a lot of us ran across the busy street for some fast food. The one good thing about the exit we had chosen was that right nearby was the Dinosaur Discovery Museum.

Dinosaur Discovery is not necessarily the most scientific of museums, but if you have the heart of a six or seven-year-old, it’s a pretty rockin place. There were huge displays of dinosaur skeletons, explanations of fossils and ancient life-forms that anyone could understand, motorized dinosaur models that made them turn their heads, blink their eyes, and shoot water at passing children, plus simulations of earthquakes and displays explaining how the rock layers had been altered over the years. It was a
small museum, but it was highly entertaining and of course it was a nice break from riding in the van. Gabe’s personal favorite included the gory flesh-eating dino, and commented that cool bobble-head dinosaur “rocked his world and his butt.”

We got back on to I-70 to put on some more miles, but we made sure to make some stops as well. Off of Route 141, we explored East Creek in the Unaweap Canyon. At the first site on the creek we had some luck finding dinosaur bone fossils. I didn’t find any myself, but the biologist in me was happy enough to poke around at the critters floating around in the cold stream water and mess around in the mud and algae. We didn’t linger too long at either site, since we wanted to get cover as much ground as we could that night.

We ended up stopping at Glenwood Springs, Colorado and ordered in some pizza that totally hit the spot. Our plan was to hang out and watch (Ron’s) hockey game, but Nate pointed out that if we rushed it a bit, we could make it to a showing of “The Day After Tomorrow.” Of course we were all excited about that and had a great time mocking all the scientific mistakes made throughout the film. Perhaps our favorite was their worry about the storm pulling down freezing air from the troposphere. Look out ladies and gentlemen. That air could freeze your entire body within a matter of seconds.