Back to our weekend excursion! After my much-needed shower, we grabbed some much-needed food and then headed out to see the sights. Our first stop? The great big pink dinosaur holding the Vernal sign, of course!
The girls especially liked this dinosaur because, well, it was pink. Duh. Also, if you look close it has eyelashes and its eyes actually move back and forth like it is watching you drive by in your car. Kind of freaky, actually. Also if you look closely, Dax is still showing off his race medal.
After we had our fill of Pinky the dinosaur, we headed over for a more authentic dinosaur experience at the Utah Field House museum. The kids can't resist brushing the dirt off some fossils.
Look at this! A woolly mammoth photo bombed this picture:
They had lots of cool stuff inside to look at, but also had some life-size dinosaur statues outside. Cora told me to "pose pretty" in front of our favorite dinosaur, the stegosaurus:
And here is Dax, doing his T-Rex impression in front of the real thing. Cora is looking concerned, much like the Triceratops is probably doing if we could only see its face.
After we finished up at the field house (where we spent probably as much time in the gift shop as we did looking at the actual exhibits), we headed back to the hotel for some more swimming. My legs were a little stiff by then, so swimming felt nice, and the hot tub felt ESPECIALLY nice. After the swim, we ordered some pizza and then called it a night.
The next day, we got up and had some of the free hotel breakfast (it was really good! They had waffles, eggs, oatmeal, yogurt, fruit, sausage, muffins, bagels, etc. etc. and on and on. Of all the many options available, the kids were the most excited to eat...Trix. Yup, I am one of those mean moms who don't buy sugary cereal very often, so they were so, SO excited to eat their fill.
After the kids were full of Trix, we took one more swim and/or soak in the hot tub, we packed up and got out of the hotel room. We had some lunch and then put Dinosaur National Monument into our navigation system. It navigated us to a road that quickly headed out into the middle of ab-so-lutely nowhere. At one point, we had to stop and wait for a cow to get off of the road:
I was a little concerned that our navigation system was playing jokes on us, but nope, it was right. Dinosaur National Monument is in the middle of Noooowhere. But we found another Stegosaurus statue (this one has a better background, don't you think?)
We looked in the visitors center (mostly at the gift shop) and then headed up to the quarry. Awesome!
Here is Dax, next to a sauropod femur that is just as tall as he is!
Cora liked the put-together skeletons better than the wall. Actually, the kids were a little under-whelmed by the wall of bones. I guess they aren't so good at using their imaginations yet, and were hoping for some animatronic Allosauruses or something....
Soon Cora was so bored she took my camera away from me. She took a bunch of pictures. Here is only a very small sample: First, me and Arden trying to identify some fossils. There were quite a few like this.
Then suddenly, I get an eye-full of this. Wha?
Next Dax had a turn behind the camera:
Okay, that is enough. Let's go on a hike! Here are the kids looking down at the beautiful canyon below:
Here is me looking down at the stairs they have so thoughtfully installed on the trail and wondering how my stiff legs are ever going to get down them. But get down them I did. Very slowly and not very gracefully.
On our hike we saw more fossils and some pretty wildflowers, but we had to start heading back so we could get home in time for bedtime. There is not a lot to see between Vernal and Heber City, and luckily the kids did pretty good and we only had to stop a couple of times. At one point we stopped at a rest stop after about 90 minutes of driving. Holy COW my legs were so stiff I must have looked like a zombie or something shuffling along trying to herd the kids to the rest room.
It was a fun trip, but as always, I was very glad to get back to my own bed (and to put Cora in hers!)
2 comments:
You know what is so crazy about being a kid? Vernal is now gonna be this awesome place with amazingly huge pink dinosaurs for your kids from now on. Because, really - a hotel, eating out and seeing dinos? Nothin tops it. Good job, Mama.
There is some amazingly beautiful country around the National Monument. But the colors and patterns in the hills would undoubtedly be lost on the little 'uns. But they were with their family, and they have their medals. They will re-run their own version of the Vernal excursion in their heads for many years to come. And each kids version will be a little different than the others.
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