Cascade Springs and the Alpine Loop Scenic Drive

Sept. 14.  Another adventure up a winding dirt road!  After we visited the Provo Canyon, we were heading home and I saw the sign for Cascade Springs.  It was on my list of things to do in Heber City, so I told Doug that since we were close, we can go ahead and drive to Cascade Springs.  So we followed the sign down a paved road until we came to the end of the pavement and what looked like a cattle gate!  Well, the sign said we were on the right road.  Did we want to do this?  Yes, we’ve come this far!  It can’t be too far.  It wasn’t, just 12 miles up a  dirt/gravel rough wash board road!  The road was pretty wide so there were only a few areas that made me nervous.  The scraggly line in the middle of the the 3rd picture is the road on the edge of the mountain.  You can also see the nice red fall foliage. 
   
Nice scenery up there even though it was a bumpy ride!  This is the American Fork Canyon of the American Fork River which runs through the bottom of the canyon.  From Heber City, the area is accessed by state route 92 through what is officially called the "Alpine Loop Scenic Byway.  You can enter the  American Fork Canyon from the west or east by following  SR-92 up the canyon to the summit of the Alpine Loop.  Spurs off SR-92 take you to Cascade Springs.  West from Midway to the top is the route we took.  Going up, we had the road to ourselves and had a higher view of the Deer Creek Reservoir, a bit shaded from the glare. 
When we got to the top, there were other cars parked at the springs and we wondered which direction they came from.  The other direction was paved!  I was all about asking where that road went!  I wasn’t that fond of taking the dirt road back again! Apparently the paved road was the Alpine Loop Drive.  Cascade Springs is a beautiful little spot north of the Mt. Timpanogos Wilderness Area in the Provo area.  Seven million gallons of water a day flow down a series of limestone terraces and pools among lush vegetation.  There are boardwalks over the springs and paths all throughout the surrounding area. 
     It was just like a small alpine setting at the top.  So pretty!    We drove part of the paved scenic Alpine Loop, but not all of it.  It would have taken us too much time and too many miles away from Heber City, so we decided to return the way we came.  Shucks, I guess we must take the dirt road back after all!  I made Doug all kinds of promises I could think of (even some impossible to keep!) if he would go very slow and hug the side of the mountain going down since I would be on the outside!!  The line in the center of the first picture is the dirt road up and over  mountains back to Heber.  This time we ate the dust of a couple of other cars heading to the top.        Just another beautiful drive marked off the list!     

Surrounded by Fall Colored Mountains in Heber City, UT

Sept. 14.  We back tracked a little bit because we decided we wanted a place to stay for awhile to avoid some of the rainy weather that was called for further south of us from hurricane Odile.  Plus, it is still just too hot for us down in Mesa, AZ, where we want to stop for some RV repairs.  So back through the pass from the Strawberry Valley.  It really is a pleasant drive and I was looking forward to it, especially with the leaves changing. 

      

We are staying at the Mountain Valley RV Resort in Heber City, and were busy exploring the first few days after arriving.  We originally reserved a spot for a week but it is so nice here, that we decided to take advantage of the monthly rate.  It is a real nice park and we are surrounded all the way around by mountains with great views right from our site.  So you know I am a “happy camper” whenever I am in the mountains! The park is less than a year old, so everything is new and nice and clean!

   

The owners of this new park must have lots of $$$$$!  They also own cattle, about 900 acres in the mountains, cabins/houses/lodges for rent on lakes, and they provide meals and fishing gear.  The park clerk said these are not just back woods cabins, but real mansions that are gorgeous.  Then in the winter they offer lodging for skiing, hunting, and snowmobiling.  I think a one room stay in one of the lodges is $200 a night.  Ouch!  But I bet it is pretty up in those areas.   The couple that own the campground down in the canyon on a previous post were even up here the other day to see if the owners might be interested in buying their campground and land.  Heber City is small but a busy area!  You have I-15, HWY 40, the route to scenic HWY 89, access to the fishing and boating at the reservoirs, back roads for horseback riding, dirt biking trails, plus scenic mountain drives.   We drove through a couple of mountain neighborhoods and there are many homes well over 2 to 3+ million dollars!  These homes are built right smack into the side of the mountains with steep roads that made me nervous.  If you don’t own tire chains or your own snow plow, you are pretty much isolated in winter.  Some people actually commute from here to Provo.  We even revisited Wasatch State Park campground where we camped on our very first  trip though the west long before we were RVing.  Funny, that we are back here after 14 years! 

Heber City is in the bowl of the Wasatch, Uinta, and Cache mountain ranges.  It is just a small town, but we have a Wal-Mart!  Heber City was founded by English emigrants who were members of The Church of Jesus of latter-Day Saints in the late 1850s, and is named after the Mormon apostle Heber C. Kimball. The city was largely pastoral, focusing largely on dairy farms and cattle ranching, and has since become a bedroom community for Orem, Prove, Park City, and Salt Lake City.  

 

Our second day, we took a ride around the Deer Creek Reservoir through Prove Canyon.  It is just a few miles from town and is the route to Provo, only about 28 miles away.  the reservoir is on the Provo River in western Wasatch County.  The dam is a zoned earthfill structure 235 feet high with a crest length of 1,304 feet .  Construction of the project began in May 1938 and was completed in 1941. The reservoir supplies water for agricultural, municipal, industrial, and recreational use.  The Deer Creek Dam is the key structure of the Provo River Project managed by the U.S. Dept. of the Interior Bureau of Reclamations.  Deer Creek is home to several fish species, including Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass, Rainbow Trout, Brown Trout, Yellow Perch, Walleye and Common Carp, which makes it a fisherman’s paradise! 

   

The canyon is pretty and there is even a waterfall.  There are a couple of parks below the road with some really nice biking and hiking trails along the Provo River.  You can even raft down the river. 

  

We didn’t go all the way through the canyon.  We will be making a few day trips to Provo later to explore that area. 

A Day of Exploring the Rest of Dinosaur National Monument

While still there, we went out early one morning for a little hiking and exploration.   The other fascinating thing about the park area, besides the dinosaurs, are the rock formations.  Plus,there are many ancient petroglyphs throughout the park.  The park map gives the locations along with hiking trails all through the park to view other petroglyphs and canyons not visible from the road.   So, one of our first stops was at small area of petroglyphs just a few yards from the road.  You can clearly make out what some of the figures are, and others are totally strange.  What were these ancient people trying to tell us?

 

We took a short hike up a canyon called “The Sounds of Silence”.  Yep, once you get back on the trail, it is pretty quiet and you are surrounded by rock.  Just the way the rock has been pushed up from horizontal to vertical is amazing.  It is hard to imagine the tremendous force that could easily change the landscape like that. 

  

  

Then we drove several miles along the scenic road out to “Jossie’s Cabin”, which is within the park boundary .  The surrounding landscape is more of the same interesting rock formations.  Jossie homesteaded way out in a canyon for 50 years.  She was divorced and her children were grown up.  She just wanted a place of her own.   She died at 90 in 1964.  An unbelievable totally independent woman.  Water from a spring, no electricity, and no telephone.   Yet she built her cabin with a dirt floor, put up her own fencing, raised cattle & chickens, grew her own food, and got her water from a spring.  She did all that alone!  Her cabin is still there and is now a open to the public and there is a picnic area.  Plus, there is a trail head for some hiking. 

  

We took a short hike up into the box canyon that Jossie used to put her cattle in when rounded up.  The canyon is narrow with a path through the trees.  It wasn’t very far at all but I was glad to leave because there were signs on the restrooms to beware of bears and cougars!  I don’t like those kind of hikes! 

So back to the campfire and that night we roasted hot dogs.  Not the best diet, but hey, it is what you do when a fire pit is right there begging for a roaring fire!   We had a great time at Dinosaur National Monument and recommend it to anyone who may be in the area when travelling.  

Dinosaur Bones at the “Dinosaur Wall”

While at Dinosaur National Monument, one of the first things we did was to visit the “dinosaur wall”.   This is the nice housing that was built to cover and preserve the exposed rock wall of dinosaur fossils that had been excavated.   During the peak of the summer, a shuttle bus takes tourist up to the enclosed quarry exhibit.  But since it is the off season, we were able to drive up and around the mountain to the big exhibit quarry building.

  

Fascinating that these creatures really did exist!  Their bones and skeletons are just as menacing as the dinosaurs in the movies!  Dinosaur Quarry is located in Utah just to the north of the town of Jensen.   This park has fossils of dinosaurs including Allosaurus , Abydosaurus , (a nearly complete skull, lower jaws and first four neck vertebrae of the specimen DINO 16488 found here at the base of the Cedar Mountain formation), and various long-neck, long-tail sauropods.  It was declared a National Monument on October 4, 1915.  The rock layer enclosing the fossils is a sandstone, and  conglomerate sandstone and conglomerate bed of alluvial bed of alluvial or river bed origin known as the Morrison Formation from the Jurassic  Period some 150 million years old. The dinosaurs and other ancient animals were washed into the area and buried presumably during flooding events.  The pile of sediments were later buried and lithified into solid rock. The layers of rock were later uplifted and tilted to their present angle by the mountain building forces that formed the Uintas. The relentless forces of erosion exposed the layers at the surface to be found by paleontologists.

  

The dinosaur fossil beds) were discovered in 1909 by Earl Douglass, a paleontologist working and collecting for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.  President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the dinosaur beds as Dinosaur National Monument in 1915.  The monument boundaries were expanded in 1938 from the original 80-acre tract surrounding the dinosaur quarry in Utah, to its present extent of over 200,000 acres in Utah and Colorado, encompassing the spectacular river canyons of the Green and Yampa. 

  

The "Dinosaur Wall" located within the Dinosaur Quarry building in the park consists of a steeply tilted rock layer containing hundreds of fossils.  The enclosing rock has been chipped away to reveal the fossil bones intact for public viewing.  It was announced in April 2009 that Dinosaur National Monument would receive $13.1 million to refurbish and reopen the gallery.  The Park Service successfully rebuilt the Quarry Exhibit Hall, supporting its weight on 70-foot steel micropile columns that extend to the bedrock below the unstable clay. The Dinosaur Quarry was reopened in Fall 2011. 

The exhibit hall has a winding walkway that allows for nice close views of the fossils from the bottom to the top of the preserved wall.  You don’t realize how huge even just one bone or skull really is until you are up close to it.   Sure glad there aren’t any of these guys around today!!

    

Interesting discovery to see and glad we decided to visit.