Today we touched 149 million year old bones!

The day started with a cold shower. I was annoyed as we had paid $30 to camp. it was a self-register camp so nobody was on site to complain to.

As we were leaving I saw a phone number on the sign so I called them to let them know. They apologised, came straight away to fix, and gave us a full refund!

Then there were the black things. We pulled into a view point and I was busy rabbiting on about how this would have been a nice place to have stopped for the night.

Mike had slowed to stop, then accelerated away, saying ‘I don’t think we’ll stop here.’

That’s when I saw black things crawling all over road. There were hundreds of them! At first I thought they were spiders and I freaked out. Then I thought they were scorpions and double freaked out. Then, on closer inspection they looked like crickets. Still, creepy as. We kept moving.

It was another beautiful drive today. We stopped at a dinosaur fossil quarry, with heaps of bones wedged into the rocks. It was pretty amazing, and we were allowed to touch them. The bones were 149 million years old, and they think the dinosaurs died of natural causes or disease. It wasn’t until 80 million years later they became extinct.

Then we went over the mountains again, up to 8600 feet. We stopped at a stunning overview of red canyon in the flaming gorge. It was absolutely stunning and we were the only ones there! We had planned to camp there, but all the campgrounds were still closed.

We continued on, more amazing views. America is a true road trippers paradise. There is so much beauty without even leaving the car.

We crossed into Wyoming and drove until after 6pm, as all the basic campgrounds were still closed for the season. We had picked a roadside rest stop, but it was so cold, and due to go to minus four overnight, so we backtracked to a camping ground.

They had after hours self-registration and we filled out the envelope with our $43. But first I wanted to make sure the showers were warm before I paid that much.

After running the showers forever, they were still freezing cold, so I decided I would pay in the morning and get a discount. Then a man on a quad bike came over. I told him I was waiting to see if the showers were hot before paying. He said you just have to run them for a while.

So I handed over my 43 dollars. Five minutes later he came back.

‘I don’t think you read my sign properly’ he said.

Oh no, I thought, I haven’t paid enough.

He continued, ‘we aren’t open for the season yet, we’re just letting people stay. It’s only $20.’

And he gave us a refund. So it was well worth it for a hot shower, and electricity so we could run our heater. We were toasty warm even though it was minus four!