Manti-La Sal National Forest, Utah

(9/16) A beautiful drive to see dinosaur tracks (continued)

Continuing toward the mountains, we steadily gained elevation.

After a while, we stopped beside the road to enjoy an incredible view overlooking the Fisher Valley and beyond it a series of ridges continuing to a horizon many miles distant. The best part was that, after so many days in popular national parks, we had this place all to ourselves.

We kept driving without finding the pulloff that had been described to us. Soon we were in a lush mountain forest looking up at bare peaks with traces of new snow. The La Sal Mountains are what geologists call laccoliths. Twenty-five million years ago, magma forced its way up through some but not all of the sedimentary layers of the Colorado Plateau. The layers above it were pushed up and the magma hardened into a dome shapes below them. With time, the overlying sediments were eroded off and the igneous rock is now exposed as the 12,700-foot high peaks of the La Sal Mountains.

We finally decided that we had driven too far and turned around. On the way back down, we found the pulloff very near the spot where we had stopped to enjoy the view. We walked to the edge of a canyon and . . .

. . . there were the tracks! Just depressions in the rock, but they were a direct link to creatures that had walked in this spot 150 million years ago!

These three-toed prints were made by bipedal carnivores called therapods.

Here we were, viewing them in a place that had no enclosures, signs, or other people around. It was a fitting climax to a wonderful day.