Fruita Fat Tire Festival and DINOSAUR TRACKS!!!!!

We arrived in Fruita, CO early Wednesday afternoon, 4/26. We’re set up in another in-town RV park for the next five nights. Not my favorite kind of place, but the whole purpose of this visit is to get Rog close to the action for the Fruita Fat Tire mountain bike festival. We dropped Rian off at the Grand Junction airport in plenty of time for her flight. Miss the itty bit already. Then, we hit a couple of the used book stores in Grand Junction – a favorite pastime of ours. Before we left, I was worried that we’d get bored and packed lots of projects, books, movies, games, etc. Yeah, well that didn’t happen! Most of that stuff hasn’t even seen the light of day. We do like to read though and love browsing the book stores.

Fruita has lots of bike themed art. Love the Raptor!

The mountain bike festivals runs Friday through Sunday. Rog got registered Thursday afternoon and picked up his blue wristband which gives him access to the demo bikes and his two free beers. Must prioritize. Lol. As I’ve mentioned, Rog is interested in a new mountain bike. He went old-school and bought a used Gary Fisher “hard tail” (no suspension) about a year ago. He has listened to other riders rave about their full suspension bikes, so he’s interested in an upgrade. At the festival, he can demo several high-end bikes that would cost hundreds to rent. It’s a sweet deal. And did I mention the two free beers. Lol.

So many choices!! Niner's motto is perfect, "pedal dammit". Lol.

Friday morning Rog hit the vendors and scored one of the demo bikes from Niner that he’s interested in. It’s not the exact model he’s looking at, but close. He rode it pretty much all day and came home with this huge grin on his face. “How was it?” I asked. “Fantastic! Gotta get me one of these…” and he continued to gush about its sheer awesomeness for quite some time. Good thing it’s not female or I’d be jealous! 😊 Here are some pictures from his test ride.  

Horsethief Bench Trail.

Colorado River from the mountain bike trail.

At least most of the crazies had enough sense to hike their bikes up and down this mess! Lol.

Saturday was a repeat with a bike from Pivot. Sunday, he rode one from Evil. He ruled out the Evil, but could happily live with either the Niner or the Pivot. Choices, choices. Lol.  On Saturday, I did a little biking of my own. No rocky single track for me, but there was a paved bike trail that ran all the way from Fruita to Grand Junction and I put in 18 miles on that without a single rock, drop, or need to bunny hop. Lol.  Most of the time while Rog was out thrashing the trails I hung around the RV, got caught up on chores, and walked the river trail at the state park just across the street from the RV park.

A family of geese enjoy the pond at the state park.

View across the Colorado River from the paved trail.

We departed Monday, 5/1, heading back to Utah and landed an excellent boondocking spot along Klondike Road about 15 miles north of Moab. We have fabulous views and total solitude. It is so relaxing after our time in the crowded RV parks. Love it here! Our plan is stay for six nights and use this as our base to visit Arches National Park and for more mountain biking. This area is a mountain bike and off-road vehicle mecca and there are tons of trails. There is a trail system less than a mile from our campsite that should keep Rog busy for days. Lol.

Solitude. Quiet. Beautiful.
This is why we love boondocking so much! 

View out our front window.

Hard not to love waking up to this. :)

Since we had a couple of hours open after getting set up, we decided to check out a nearby trail with …. wait for it…. (what you already guessed?!) … DINOSAUR FOOTPRINTS!! There were two locations and we stopped at the Copper Ridge Dinosaur Tracks site first. The info boards were interesting, it is amazing how much the scientists can tell just from the footprints. There were two kinds of dinosaurs here, a long-necked herbivore (sauropod) and two different sizes of meat-eaters (theropods). They could tell how large they were, what direction they were traveling, and that one of the theropods had a limp! The tracks, however, were a little underwhelming. They weren’t as clearly defined as I’d hoped, but I guess if I was 150 million years old, I’d lose some definition too. Lol.

Those are sauropod footprints!

There was a sign post for another site, but it was a 3-mile hike to the Dinosaur Stomping Grounds. Based on the first site, I wasn’t sure it was going to be worth it. Oh, I was soooooooooooo wrong. The hike was fun, lots of great views and the coolest water features. 

Lovely view of the La Sal Mountains from the trailhead.

Yeah! It's sunny and the cactus are blooming.

  Nature's water feature, strings of small pools carved in the slickrock.

Best of all, the dinosaur tracks were just spectacular!! A two-acre area with 2,300 footprints! They go off in multiple directions and are a variety of sizes, but they are all from a single type of meat-eating dinosaur – this really was their stomping grounds. Many are individual prints, but some you can actually see the trail as they walked along. How incredible that the conditions were just right that we can still see and enjoy them today. It is just so insanely cool!  We got to walk in the tracks of real, live dinosaurs!!  If this doesn’t bring out the little kid in you, nothing will.

These dinosaur prints did not disappoint!

Check out the size. 

Only three toes to my five, but he's gotta be a solid size 15 extra-wide. Lol.

You can follow the trail as this one walked along.
There were 7 or 8 footsteps, but you can only see 3 clearly in the picture.

Just one more. Are you dino'ed out yet? Lol.

Tomorrow we are going to visit Arches National Park for a half day and then head into Moab to arrange for a Wednesday rental of two mountain bikes. More on that later. 😊