We started off our day with a visit to the Utah Field House of Natural History.
This HUGE Diplodocus cast was the centerpiece of the museum. It was awesome!
They had several interactive exhibits for the kids.
Allosaurus & Stegosaurus- all the dinosaurs on exhibit were dinosaurs that had been excavated in Dinosaur National Monument. It was neat to see the ones that were from right around there.
This was a neat wall of stone made of fossilized leaves and small ocean creatures. I thought it was beautiful!
They had a really cool outdoor garden with Life-sized replicas of dinos.
These are all shots that Logan took. The world of dinosaurs from an 11 year olds view:
A few final pics!
We ate lunch in the downtown area in a garden near the museum. After lunch we headed to McConkie Ranch. This is a working ranch where the owner has discovered tons of petroglyphs. We hiked around for about an hour exploring these. We just hiked the regular trail and did not do the Three Kings trail. It was pretty neat!
These guys were our favorite!
We left the ranch and headed to Red Fleet State Park. Along the way we passed this on the side of a mountain:
This was a 1 1/2 mile long hike out to the lake where there are dilophosaurus tracks all over the place. It was pretty warm and the kids were tired. We were thinking it would be a horrible walk out there! But we played this really fun game and told the kids they were dinosaur hunters. The trail to the tracks was marked with painted tracks so we followed along and the kids kept pretending to see and hear all these different dinosaurs! It was a blast and before we knew it.....we were there!
Some of the imprints were hard to see until the sun went down a bit. As it got towards later evening it was much easier to make them out.
And some were really deep and easy to see! We were the only people around and had the whole place to ourselves!
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| Love this pic! |
The kids jumped in the lake to cool off!
After hanging out and relaxing for a while he hiked back to the car.
My Three Dinosaur Hunters!
I don't remember what we ate for dinner! Then we headed back to the hotel and relaxed and went to bed.
The next day we woke up and headed home . We drove the 12 hours straight through. There was a bad accident which had the I-17 at a snail crawl, so we rerouted the GPS and went four-wheeling in the minivan through the desert near the rode to Crown King. It was crazy! We made it safe and sound but it was a wild end to a fabulous trip!
I am so glad we took this trip. We were able to see such interesting things and have some great experiences. It makes me happy to take the time to learn about things when the kids are really interested in them- I think they get more out of the experience.
