Dinosaur Day

 Dinosaur Valley State Park

We headed to check out some real dinosaur footprints as well as another dinosaur attraction nearby. This was on our summer bucket list, but the timing didn't quite work out. When I called they advised us come in August or September for the water to be the lowest. We have had a fairly wet summer, so the tracks were all still underwater. We plan to keep an eye out the next several years and go back when the river is lower. We really enjoyed taking a family day trip. We realized during this little jaunt that this doesn't happen nearly enough and we hope to start taking more of them!

We continued down the sandy path, and originally chose to pass this site by looking from afar...

When the sandy path ran out before we found The Ballroom Site, we decided it had to be just around those rocks...we off-roaded it in flip flops for quite a while before turning back. We are all for exploring and hiking, but our goal this particular day was putting our feet in a dinosaur print...so I was getting a bit frustrated at the lack of signs for the various print sites. The guy at the front desk made it sound much simpler to find the sites along the path.

So, by golly, I decided we were going out to the middle of the river even if we fall in because it is so slippery! (This was my just-in-case-we-cant-get-to-the-ballroom-site plan.)

So you can see it was not exactly a great spot to get into the river, and Lorelei and Brad (the clumsier two of the family) were not tolerating my desire to step in a print. The closest comparison the slippery surface I can come up with is an ice-rink. It was crazy. Makin got out there with me and stopped and said, "I wish I wouldn't have come out here."

We made it!!!
(I held my cell phone high in the air hoping I could save it if I fell in.
But I had to be able to capture the moment!)

Brad's view with the fancy camera.

Then we finally drove the car to another location to help us get to The Ballroom Site. They call it that because there are so many prints different directions it looks like the dinosaurs were dancing. :)

This girl does NOT like to be on any unsteady surface,
so she mustered up a lot of courage to get out there in the print and I think she was glad she did!

There were little fish swimming and the kids loved watching them.

These dinosaurs were at the entrance and the kids just thought they looked cool.
While I took a few pictures Brad read up and added some history, which made them way cooler!
They were made for the 1964-1965 World's Fair and were quite the show back then!
(See World's Fair Wonders below this for more details.)

Dinosaur World

We grabbed a quick lunch and then headed to Dinosaur World for the afternoon.

There are several attractions in this small town to go along with the tracks, but thankfully a friend had gone a while back and mentioned she thought Dinosaur World was the best choice. We had such a great time.

There was a small museum we loved checking out.

We had a fossil dig activity. The kids sifted through sand and could choose three items to keep.

There were various shark teeth along with several other small fossils. The kids loved choosing which three they thought were the most special.

Then we walked the path for the various dinosaur replicas, which also had information to read about the dinosaur you were looking at.

There was a pond to feed some fish half-way through the walk.

We narrowly escaped the T-Rex

Then the kids got to play in a giant sandbox and uncover dinosaur bones.

There were some unruly preschoolers throwing sand so this didn't last as long as we thought it might.

Then we picked up our Dino Gem bags, which they were super-excited about.

The bag was full of dirt, with some unknown gems inside it. They dumped it in a tray to sift it out in the water. It was so fun seeing their reactions as they discovered the various gems. They loved looking through these and trying to identify them that night and the following day.

(There was a gem list with pictures they got with their bag.)

It was such a great time as a family and the perfect day-trip!