Belated Recap of Visit to Dinosaur National Monument

Hello Family and Friends, from Mack's Inn and RV Park near Island Park, Idaho.   Since Dave's out fishing, I thought I would take the time to update the blog today with our trip into Dinosaur National Monument, which I had not gotten to earlier.  

The display itself was much more interesting than I thought it would be; when we arrived at the Visitor center a trolley was waiting to take guests to the actual display area about 1 mile into the park.

 

Taking the trolley is the only way into the area where the display building is located, unless you are traveling with a physically challenged individual, then they will allow your vehicle to drive up to that area. 

 

Upon entering the building which is built around a huge excavated wall containing over 1500 fossils which is only a small amount that was discovered in the early 1920's.  A majority of museums around the world obtained their fossils from this area.  That is one way that the museum in Chicago for instance, obtained a mummy, was by trading a complete skeleton of a dinosaur for it.  This fact was learned by a long and very interesting and informative discussion that we had with the Park Ranger.  She was standing off to the side and seemed very excited to have us approach her and start asking questions.  She told us that a majority of the people will not do that; so by us approaching her and starting to ask questions we drew in quite a crowd.  Therefore, she was able to give a rather long and question filled talk on the history of the area.  She made the area become more alive and interesting due to all the facts she gave. We truly enjoyed visiting with her.  She has a degree in geology and anthropology; and her job requires her to move every six months.  But it is clear she loves what she is doing and has worked all over the USA at numerous National Parks.

 

 

Here are a small number of pictures from the display which is two story, so people can get a very good view of the wall of fossils.   Literally thousands of pieces were taken from this area and traded by universities and museums all over the world. Carnegie in Pittsburgh was the initial sponsor of the discovery and excavation. Therefore, the Carnegie Museum there has one of the largest displays.  Guess where we might be going for another trip?

 

 

After leaving the display area, we rode the trolley back to the Visitor center and walked around the gift shop, where we departed with a few items.  :)

 

Then it was on to a 17 mile drive though the remainder of the park; we were provided with a booklet that listed about 15 points of interest along the route.  It was quite hot, in the 90s, and the sun was very bright at this time of the day, so my pictures didn't turn out as well as I had hoped.  Guess, I will need to do some further editing.   We enjoyed looking at petroglyphs in a few different locations on the drive.

 

 

One of the interesting rock formations is Turtle rock; this picture is for Christine.   :)

 





 

After the drive, it was back to Vernal to have a light supper and rest at our campsite.  Here is a little cutie that greets you as you come through town.