I went on a short hike along the river after I packed up camp and I was able to get pretty close to where the river enters the canyon.
I drove another hour to this town called Dinosaur. There’s another entrance to the national monument here. An appropriately named town. I stopped off at the visitors center and checked to see if my car could make it to Echo Park. The road isn’t paved and I wasn’t sure if 4WD was required. Luckily only high clearance is needed and that’s exactly what I have.
The drive to the campsite wasn’t so bad. The first mile or so was tough because it leads down into the canyon. It’s just a bunch of switchbacks. But after that, it was pretty straightforward. The trip from town to the campsite took me about 2 hours or so.
The area around the campsite is really stunning. The river wasn’t too far and I took a hike a few miles along it after I settled in. There is this gigantic rock sitting right on the edge of the river here. It’s called Steamboat Rock and yeah, it’s just one of those really cool geographical features you can find out here.
I met a friend at the campsite. His name is Dan and he is driving his motorcycle from Wyoming back to where he lives in Utah. We had a pretty solid conversation for a few hours.
He recently went through a messy divorce and he is only 32 years old. Kind of crazy what can happen. You do all the right things sometimes but you still end up suffering. Maybe we will reconnect when I am traveling through Utah.
I left the campground in the morning and drove back towards the main park road. It takes you out to the main lookout and they have a 2-mile hike out to one of the rock overhangs. The view was really amazing.
Not much really happened the rest of the day to be honest. I stopped in town for a few things and I found a BLM campsite just over the border in Utah. I should be able to find more free camping now that I’ve crossed over. There’s a ton of BLM land in the state.