Monitor Merrimac Trail

Dogs Unknown

Features Views

Start at the enormous parking lot ringed with red boulders (there is camping here, but there are better spots on the nearby roads). Follow the main dirt road a short ways and you'll come to an intersection with signs indicating "Mill Road" and "Dino Trail" to the right. You'll exit this way, so for now, stay left on the main road.

In another tenth of a mile, you'll come to a sign saying "Halfway Stage Station" to the right. You can park here! Take this right turn on a very sandy, smaller road. You are now at the historic Halfway Stage House, and the beginning of the trail, through a gate straight ahead.

The trail starts with a few short sandy spots but quickly changes to slickrock. You gently hike up remarkably smooth slickrock following white painted markers. Once you reach the end of the enormous bluff you have been hugging on the right, there is a shortcut trail branching to the right.

Continue hiking over an enormous expanse of slickrock around another huge bluff, and eventually begin heading back north. Now the trail begins a gradual decline over the slickrock.

The slickrock portion of this trail ends at an intersection with the old Monitor Merrimac Jeep Track. From here you may choose to turn back or continue north along the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Trail. If you decide to take the right turn you'll soon on the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Trail, following a dry wash. After a mile or so, you pop out at the end of a road and parking area.

Take the 150 yard, signposted Dinosaur trail. There really are purple-ish dinosaur fossils and petrified wood (including a cool 2 foot diameter tree trunk!) that you are even permitted touch.

After that experience, continue to the parking lot where you began, only a couple tenths of a mile up the dirt road.

Be sure to check out the 1/4 mile "Mill Canyon Dinosaur Tracksite" by the campground to see 112 million year old dino tracks!!!!