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Thursday, January 31, 2013

Denver: Day 3 - Dinasour Road

Whew...yes I intend to finish posting about my Denver trip.  It was just THAT amazing.  And I intend to post about my SC trip too. :)

Poor C had to work so the girls and I headed out.  C suggested checking out a dinosaur track park that was by the road.  I gave Rebekah some options and she chose that (over the zoo).  So we headed out.

It was SUPER hot.  Denver had wild fires the week before thanks to the sweltering heat.  That day was no different with triple digits.  I kept water handy for everyone.  The website said you could take a tram to the top, but had to walk back down.  But then it turned out they changed - you got to ride the "tram" (it turned out to be more like a mini bus) back down too.

I actually don't recall the name of our tour guide - but I want to say 'Mike'.  So we shall henceforth call him MIKE!  He was pretty into his job actually and I enjoyed his talk.  I really liked the fact that he was so animated.  

He gave us a lot of information - including how to tell the difference
between a rust deposit and a fossil.  (Lick it is ONE way...)

I held Ruth the entire time - so there aren't a ton of good pictures of her. LOL


Mike even had photography suggestions.  The biggest was
to be sure to have something in the picture to show size...
this is a cross section of a spine I believe.


Mike pointing out a foot print.

Another foot print.  This dino was so heavy it stepped through sediment.
There were two types of foot prints pointed out.  The first was an inverse footprint (below). It looked like a paw print basically...like if the dino stepped in some water and you were looking at it from below the surface.

The other type was a dino that was walking across some already established sediment.  This dino was so heavy it crushed through a bunch of layers.  That is definitely a large foot...and a heavy body!  (This is what is being demonstrated above.)

I'm shaking hands with a dinosaur paw!

OH NO!  A dino is stepping on me!

One of the few I've got of the girls together.
 Ruth was pretty wilty.  I was sure it was the heat and tried to get her to drink up her water.


Mom - what ARE you doing?  HOW EMBARRASSING!
SMILE CHILD!  :-P

Checking out paw prints
I thought it was pretty neat how you could crawl on, touch, pretty much do whatever you wanted to the fossils.  So many places are DON'T TOUCH - that this was really a breath of fresh air.  I think it was one of the reasons Rebekah enjoyed this so much too!  (This was her second favorite part of the trip...first being the mountains!)




Tour Guide Mike took this picture for us! :-)

 
Back at the base...
The whole thing took a couple hours.  But it was absolutely completely awesome.  I highly recommend this place to anyone who find dinosaurs remotely interesting. 

I did let Rebekah pick out a gift at the gift shop.  She chose a necklace with a dino on it and for Peter we got a little toy dino thing. 

Next up, we headed to the aquarium and starved to death.  :-P 

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