Dinosaurs, Hot Weather, and Californiarado

Day 4. We woke up and packed up and headed out of Rock Springs, and it was HOT! We drove through basically the desert, and drove past Flaming Gorge National Park, which looked like a nice oasis in the middle of a desert. We reached Utah, and in Vernal, we visited the Natural History Museum. It had big statues of Dinosaurs and some nice exhibits. Mostly they were nice because they were inside and air conditioned. We watched a nice movie about how dinosaurs lived hundreds of millions of years ago, and Sierra had a few things to say about that after watching the Dr. Dinosaur movies (sorry, only my mom will understand this). We decided to skip the excavation site because again, Sadie was sleeping, and it was HOT. We also took a look at the campground and decided to keep driving. There was a sad little muddy river, no shade and some rocks. We drove and drove and drove and got to Glenwood Springs, CO. Supposedly there was a campground there, but unlike Wyoming and Montana, where there are hundreds of signs telling you where the campgrounds are, and RV parks and campgrounds around every corner,and right off of the main road, Colorado does not seem to promote the activity of camping. We kept driving and decided that in this part of Colorado, camping means staying at the Super 8 with the rock facade to keep in line with building codes. Even Target had a rock facade. That is a LOT of rock. There were no campgrounds that we could find in Carbondale, or in Basalt, except for one completely packed, rundown RV park that I am sure the city of Basalts' community planners are devising ways to sieze and bulldoze as I type these words. It did not conform to the rock facade standards. Unfortunately the campbook I had grabbed at AAA did not have Colorado, so we stopped at a gas station (with a cool antique wood and rock siding, and even the Conaco sign was ritzy), and asked where a campground was. "Are you kidding, this is Colorado, there is camping everywhere?!!" was the answer we got. They told us how to get to all this camping, and we headed out. We went through a little town that looked expensive, and started driving on the road with all the camping. After 20 minutes of driving, we decided that their idea of camping was the pullouts for the fly fisherman. It certainly wasn't the areas with the 50 bazillion "no trespassing" signs and the huge summer houses along the river. It was a beautiful canyon with red rock and lots of aspen trees. We were all very tired and ready to get out of the car when we pulled into the national park at Reudi Resovoir. It seemed that 50 other cars from California had the same idea, and the campground was already full! I think those poor 20 people that actually had campspots were stuck in gridlock all day while Suburbans and Range Rovers and Mercedes SUV's drove through the campground in a constant stream. It was completely nuts. We drove 30 minutes back to the main road, called the condo and added a night to stay in Snowmass for the night. It was nice to have a nice soft bed and a shower. Aaaaahh.