Utah

Visiting Dinosaur National Park from Salt Lake City can certainly be done in a long day trip, but if you have more time, base your stay in Vernal with half a dozen comfortable, affordable motels, or at camp sites and cabins in the collection of parks stretching from Vernal to Flaming Gorge, forty-five minutes away. The area around Vernal is home to a mix of federal and Utah state parkland recreational areas with opportunities for horseback, ATV and dirt bike riding, hiking, fishing, river rafting and boating.

Or you can go sight-seeing to enjoy the magnificent landscape by driving into the Flaming Gorge Recreation Area. Stand on the top of the mesa above Red Canyon and look down into the gorge created by the Green River as it cuts through the mountains, widening into a reservoir behind the Flaming Gorge Dam, a mini-sized dam that created a maxi-sized body of water stretching across three states (Utah, Wyoming and Colorado).

If you want to just hang out, doing nothing more strenuous than having a nice lunch, drinking a beer or two and watching the power boats scoot around the lake behind Flaming Gorge Dam, stop at the Snag Bar & Grill at the Cedar Springs Marina and kick back.