Two Bay Area families consisting of four adults and eight kids thought of a crazy fun road-trip to travel from the San Francisco Bay Area to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. First stops Lundy Canyon Campground and Gooseberry Mesa BLM.
Dinosaur National Monument, Oh My!!
What fun we had at Dinosaur National Monument, in Utah! Our first intention was to camp at Green River Campground at Dinosaur NM on our second night of our road trip, but due to a bad storm and cranky toddlers we opted out to stay in a hotel in Heber City about 2.5 hours east of Dinosaur NM. It worked out for the best since the kids (and parents) got to take a swim in a pool!
How cool is a ANY visitor center with a dinosaur in front of it?! I wish I would have recorded my kids faces with the saw the "real" dinosaur. My daughter was terrified and my son screamed, "I WANT TO RIDE IT!!!" Sorry buddy....
We did a little shopping at the Visitor Center and purchased our new National Parks Passport, an Apatosaurus which my son named him "T-Rex" (ironic) and a stuffed Stegasaurus for our little girl. Then we took the "Roller Coaster" (the Tram, but it's cooler if you call it a roller coaster to toddlers) up to the Quarry Hall Exhibit Center. I wish I could have read all the signs, learned more about the history and taken better pictures but we had a little boy that saw a giant wall with Dinosaur bones in it that looked very climbable...so here are a few.
Everyone got a little exercise and most importantly the kids got to run around and burn some energy before getting back into the car for the next few hours! I really wish we had more time to spend at Dinosaur NM but with a time crunch to get to Colorado, we had to say goodbye to the land where dinosaurs once roamed. Apparently there are nice auto tours, hiking, camping and river rafting at Dinosaur NM. Hopefully we will have a chance to come back some day and enjoy it more. Until then I leave you with a desert flower....
Sorry National Park Service, about my son climbing your sign....I guess that is what happens when you put a three year old in climbing gym, that has been sitting in the car for a few hours. We had calculated our break correctly and stopped to see DINOSAURS! My kids were ecstatic, especially since my husband recently gave our son a dinosaur book and he's been memorizing all the names. Our boy was ready to see the Allosaurus!
I was terribly fascinated with this mountain rock formations, apparently that how rocks are in Utah. I love California but Utah has some pretty cool locations that I definitely want to go back to. My only complaint is the lack of available coffee locations that stay up past 7 p.m.
How cool is a ANY visitor center with a dinosaur in front of it?! I wish I would have recorded my kids faces with the saw the "real" dinosaur. My daughter was terrified and my son screamed, "I WANT TO RIDE IT!!!" Sorry buddy....
We did a little shopping at the Visitor Center and purchased our new National Parks Passport, an Apatosaurus which my son named him "T-Rex" (ironic) and a stuffed Stegasaurus for our little girl. Then we took the "Roller Coaster" (the Tram, but it's cooler if you call it a roller coaster to toddlers) up to the Quarry Hall Exhibit Center. I wish I could have read all the signs, learned more about the history and taken better pictures but we had a little boy that saw a giant wall with Dinosaur bones in it that looked very climbable...so here are a few.
It was truly fantastic to see how perfectly the dinosaurs fossils were preserved. I think we know there were dinosaurs that roamed the Earth because we learn about them in school, read about them in books, see them in movies but seeing these fossils with my own eyes made me really understand that these creatures were truly alive. They roamed the same land I was roaming with my own children thousands and thousands of years after these creatures died.
Well since the dinosaurs roamed the earth so must we! Of course we decided to hike back down from Quarry Hall Exhibit Center to the Visitor Center on the Fossil Discovery Trail! It was quite warm high 80's maybe even low 90's so we hiked a very short distance. Just enough so we could all stretch our legs before the next couple of hours in the car.
The beginning of our 1.3 mile hike!
The only shade we found! Loving all the rock formations.
Below is our little jaunt on the trail at Dinosaur National Monument on Strava.
Everyone got a little exercise and most importantly the kids got to run around and burn some energy before getting back into the car for the next few hours! I really wish we had more time to spend at Dinosaur NM but with a time crunch to get to Colorado, we had to say goodbye to the land where dinosaurs once roamed. Apparently there are nice auto tours, hiking, camping and river rafting at Dinosaur NM. Hopefully we will have a chance to come back some day and enjoy it more. Until then I leave you with a desert flower....
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Summer Road Trip 2013
Just getting back from our whirlwind family road trip to Colorado! Have too much to write about but here's a little glimpse of our trip all around the west!
The Loch at Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado
Visiting the Allosaurus at Dinosaur National Monument, Utah.
Elk at the Alpine Tundra at Rock Mountain National Park, Colorado
A quick stop at Arches National Park, Utah
A little camping at Castle Rock Campground, Fishlake National Forest, Utah
A jaunt on The Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada!
A desert stop on the Pacific Crest Trail, in California.
Three National Parks, one national forest campground, two hotels, a cabin and a SUV were our homes for the last week. So many stories, lessons learned and best of all lots of fun!
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