Saturday, May 9, 2015

The Dino Dash

This weekend we loaded up the whole crew and headed out to Vernal for the Dino Half.
It's a 1/2 marathon for adults or 1/2 mile for kids. We opted for the 1/2 mile run.



 Stretching before the race.
(Really just a diversion to keep them busy until the race started)
 Tessa led the stretches and showed Adam stretches from her gymnastic classes.
 Adam was one of the first kids to cross the finish line.

 
 Crossing the finish line with Tessa Boo. She insisted she finished in 17th place.


Proudly showing off their medals for finishing the race.
  After the race we went to see Dinosaur bones in Vernal and at Dinosaur National Monument.
Our first stop was the Dinosaur Museum.
 Daddy took the older 3 kids around the museum while Mommy hung out in the lobby feeding Caleb.

 Posing with petroglyphs

 LOOK OUT TESSA!

"Digging" for fossils.  Gwen loved it so much we had to practically
tear her away to go to the next exhibit


 

 Gwen was not a fan of the big dinosaurs and kept running away from them.





 Gwen welcoming us to Dinosaur National Monument
 This is called the "Wall of Bones".  It is an old dinosaur fossil quarry.  The entire wall is filled with bones from different dinosaurs.  There was hardly any space without a dinosaur bone

 Even though the bones are all together the dinosaurs didn't die in the same spot or at the same time. The Park Ranger told us that there are so many bones in one spot because there was a river that carried all the bones downstream where they eventually were buried and fossilized.



 Adam and Tess leaning against a Camarasaurus femur bone




 Our happy boy was happy the entire trip!  This was his first big road trip and he did awesome.
 We took a shuttle to and from the quarry. 
Gwennie thought it was a fun way to ride; no doors or seatbelts
 This rock formation looks like stegosaurus.  The oval shaped rock at the bottom of the hill is the head and the rocks jutting upward are like the stegosaurus plates along the back.




 

 
 
 
 Gwen wasn't too impressed with the fossils.  She spent most of the time picking pebbles and shoving them into every crack and crevice she could find.






It was a fun little weekend trip. It's been long time since we got away from home. It was fun to watch the kids race and see the amazement on their faces with all the cool dinosaurs that we saw. We will definitely be going back to Vernal to see more!