It was a lovely sunny morning with scarcely a breath of wind. If only yesterday had been like this ... but it wasn't. After another nice and long hot shower I got dressed and tossed my bags into the tent before locking the zipper. No, it won't keep a thief away, but it will deter some inquisitive young child and there are a lot of those about.

I had called the local church from Duschesne and found out where it was and what times they had services from their answer phone. I cycled into town and found it but there was nobody about. I went for a bit of an exploration and returned 10 mins before it was due to start and it was still closed. Inauspicious. I called the number on the sign - one of the few churches I've found openly advertising their times and giving contact numbers - and spoke with someone who said that they had all gone to a camp meeting in Colorado so church was closed today. Ho hum. I was quite disappointed but such is life when travelling on a bike.

I decided to go and explore the 'Field Museum' and look at the natural history of the area. It was most interesting. Vernal is the jumping off point for Dinosaur park which is an area where they have found an abundance of dinosaur bones and fossils. The museum displayed a large number of bones and fossils as well as describing in great detail the history of the exploration which I found most interesting.

The area was first explored by Europeans in the mid-1800's, and a number of travellers noted the presence of fossils. This brought in paelentologists who excavated fossils and bones, something which continues to this day. I loved the story of one of these fellows who was captured by a Sioux raiding party. When they examined his possessions and found all he had was a hammer and bags of stones and bones they decided that he was crazy and let him go. Having seen the conditions that they dug under -40 degrees in winter; +40 in summer, I think they are all a bit mad.

The museum had a small park with life sized models of the dinosaurs. I was interested to see how they were done. The sculptor went to a number of different museums and took photos and measurements of the skeletons. He then made a 1/12^th scale model which was true to the bones and in the position that he wanted it. This model was then ‘sliced’ into dozens of pieces, each representing a cross-section of the model. These were then projected onto plywood by a factor of 12 so that they were life-sized. The plywood was then cut and assembled to make the full sized model. Quite a feat and the results were impressive.

From there I went had some burritos for lunch and then went over to the ‘Daughters of Utah Pioneers’ museum which had an array of artefacts from the early pioneers. Boy were they tough. There were two elderly ladies who ran the place and we had a long chat about the Mormon religion. The museum was located across from a Mormon Temple and Vernal was once almost entirely Mormon, although now that are barely a majority. They have some fascinating beliefs.