Dinosaur National Monument

We had such a great trip to Dinosaur National Monument a few weekends ago. It was about a 3 hour drive away so not too bad. We had never been before and it was a super family friendly destination. The highlight might have been the girls getting to become Junior Park Rangers. They loved doing the little dinosaur educational pamphlets, recited the pledges with the help of the Park Ranger and were totally tickled to get their badges.

The National Monument was really neat. It has this exhibition hall which was this big building encasing this section of rock that had dinosaur bones exposed poking out of the rock. It was so cool. There were so many bones! And archeologist didn't even have to dig them out to put them on display. Tetonic plate movement lifted them to the surface and then erosion exposed them. It was so cool to see this two story tall wall of rock just littered with bones.

We went on a few hikes at Dinosaur National Monument. We went did Fossil Discovery Trail which was ranger led, which was cool because he pointed out fossils along the hike and talked to us about the plants, history, and geology. Then we also did the hike at Josie's cabin. That was a really neat hike. The hike started at her home she built herself in 1913 and lived in mostly alone for 50 years. The hike meanders along on her land and you can see the fences she built, the fruit and shade trees she planted, her chicken coop she built, and the canyon where she would let her cattle roam. She lived there all the way until the 1960's until she was 90 years old. It was really neat to feel like you were exploring this farm and getting to know this incredibly strong and independent woman and imagine what it would be like to live that Waldenesque life.

Another really awesome hike we went on was actually not inside Dinosaur National Monument but a little outside the Monument on an independently owned ranch. The hike is called McConkie Ranch Petroglyphs and it was really amazing. You hike uphill a little way until you come up on this massive shear wall and the wall was just covered with so many petroglyphs. It was so cool! You hike around the shear wall and just keep your eyes peeled and see petroglyph after petroglyph as you hike along the wall.

Then we also went to the Dinosaur museum in Vernal which was fun as well as two parks with playgrounds for the kids to play at as well as the hotel pool. So we mixed stuff David and I wanted to see with kid stuff and it made for a really nice Memorial Day weekend.