On the third day of our trip we debated going to Canyonlands National Park with the kids. But when we were doing some research the night before we saw that it was over an hour to get to the nearest entrance of the park, and at that section of the park the hikes were comparable to the ones we did at Arches. So we decided to do a couple of smaller things and head home instead of staying an extra day. The kids did great at Arches, but we thought we would be pushing our luck to make them sit in the car for a while, then do the exact same things we'd done the day before. So we decided to drive about 5 miles on an off-road trail to find Mill Canyon Dinosaur Trail. It's an awesome site owned and maintained by the US Bureau of Land Management where you walk along a trail and see exposed fossils. Very cool!
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| It's hard to see in the picture, but you park near these signs, then cross over a "wash" and climb up the other side, and follow the trail along the edge of a small mountain. |
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| It was so cool to walk along and spot a dinosaur bone. The placards helped - those fossils can be hard to find! |
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My sign.
No, my sign! |
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| Cutest paleontologist ever. |
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| I was a little disappointed that Jack wasn't as excited about the dinosaur bones as we thought he'd be. Of course, he still had a great time. We were outside, after all, and there was lots of exploring and climbing to be done. |
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| How would you like to rock climb on those towers?? The elevation is almost 5000 feet above sea level. I'm curious what the vertical ascent is though? |
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| Walking on the frozen "wash" when we finished the trail and started to head back to the car. Still quite a novelty. |
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| He's never in too much of a hurry to play in the sand... |
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| and I guess she isn't either. |
This was a great little excursion for us as we headed out of town on the last day of our trip.
For (my) future reference, this site has a lot of information regarding the fossils to be found on the trail:
I'm surprised Jack didn't get too enthralled, too! Sounds like a great kid day, though.
ReplyDeleteLooks like fun!
ReplyDeleterandom side note - are you making collages or are you using photo bucket or some such photo site to make your pictures go side by side like that? (toldya it was random) :)