More than milling

Fantasy Canyon. . .

When our great-niece Brianna finally managed to set aside her other adventures, such as climbing Mt. Hood to celebrate the summer solstice, and join us in Vernal, our little party decided to visit Fantasy Canyon.

What a crazy odd place it is with bizarre formations sculpted into forms that defy gravity.  It was fun exclaiming at every oddity that was stranger than the last.

Rocks were not the only things twisted into bizarre shapes.

 We named some of the twisted forms; this one was “rubber ducky”.

The infamous Bassetts . . .

History was our next port-of-call when we drove in to explore the homestead developed by Josie Bassett, one of those larger-than-life characters who sprang into being in the sparsely settled West of old.

Josie & her sister Ann were as tough as they come, carving out their own niches in history.  Raised in the Brown’s Park region, they led hard and eventful lives.

The Bassett girls’ parents were friends and associates of Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid and their outlaw gang known as the Wild Bunch, in addition to others of a less-than-lawful inclination.  As adults, the girls continued those friendships which grew into various romantic dalliances.  Despite having been sent to finishing school in Boston, Ann & Josie were more at home working their ranches.

The rough & tumble West suited them just fine: Ann continued to ranch in Brown’s Park, successfully holding her own against cattle rustling by larger ranches and numerous outlaws in the region, said to be assisted in that by their tough friends.  Indeed, rustling seemed to be a way of life in that isolated land: the Bassetts evidently engaged in the practice right along with the others.

In her mid-years, after five marriages, Josie took up a homestead in what is now designated as the Dinosaur National Monument.  Her well-chosen location had running water, bottomland for pastures & crops and huge grassy box canyons with streams, where she corralled cattle & hogs.

Josie’s cabin remains open & empty since her death in 1964, aged 90, and some outbuildings are still tucked back into alcoves overgrown with vines and poison ivy.

The overriding issue while we were there was a plague of crickets - creepy crawly, dare I say disgusting - insects numbering in the millions like a real-life horror movie.  Truly, they were the subject of the day, with kids shrieking when the insects got on them, and all of us shuddering as we watched their zombie-like march to nowhere.

 
Later, we encountered hordes of them in various places, but none in other spots.  I thought it odd that the bugs seemed not to be eating vegetation, but only purposely moving moving moving, although they did feast on their own dead, and that there were no birds of any kind eating the crickets. 

 

 

 

Cub Creek . . .

A stop at one of the zillion prehistoric rock art sites elicited lively "discussion" among our bunch when the younger set opined that one figure represented a vase with flowers or plants coming out the top.  It was some time before I wasn't shouted down when I offered the view that those people most likely never decorated with flowers in a vase.  I leave it to my readers to take a stand one way or the other.

Dinos . . .

Presuming one might want to view 1,500 dinosaur bones in one spot, there’s a place for that - the quarry exhibit hall at Dinosaur National Monument, and of course we went, we saw, we touched and we were amazed.  

The extensive fossilized remains have been partially excavated, and left in situ to afford an understanding of how they were deposited eons ago.  One full skeleton fossil taken from there is on exhibit at the Smithsonian.
 

 

Some of us may be old, but we're not fossils just yet.

Days filled with catching up were followed by evenings filled with even more catching up.

Split Mountain . . .

A highlight of our meet-up was a whitewater raft trip on the Green River between the fantastic Split Mountain cliffs, an otherwise inaccessible stretch of the river.  Bri brought her cell phone and supplied the photos of the trip.  She did not photograph the swirls of crickets on the water’s surface, nor the ones that insisted on riding in the boat with us and commencing to climb our legs, mostly at the moment when our guide, Miles, instructed us to row (not shudder, flick & stomp as we were wont to do at such moments).
 

We made it through wet but not dumped into the rapids, unlike our companion raft that ejected three of its riders.  Much excitement, but all were retrieved in semi-good shape.

Moonshine Arch . . .

Not ones to be lolling around when there are sights to be seen, our little troupe managed a hike to Moonshine Arch during the morning just prior to the young’uns departing for their various drives & flights to hie themselves back home.

Not to put too fine a line on it, but we plumb exhausted ourselves, as evidenced by this photo of the youngest and the oldest of us.

It was a sad leave-taking, as always, but we were left with gratitude that we had time together.