From the Backseat

My kids crack me up.  I think they're hilarious.

Best comments from Salem that I overheard on this trip:

1. (In a retelling of "The Three Little Pigs")
"One little pig wanted to make his house only out of organic materials!"
Bahahaha... I don't think I even knew what the word organic meant until I was in high school. Ohhh, my poor kids with their tree-hugging mother.  (I've got to admit I was quite proud)

2.  Looking out at some trees that were knocked over, Averlin said, "I wonder what happened to those trees."  Salem replied, "(sigh) You never know.  Every tree has a story."

3.  "Some dogs are spoiled.  They're raised in a purse and they get to pee on money."

Wyoming Water Fun

One of the most disconcerting things to see on our trip out west was the terribly low water levels in the rivers we passed by.  The Platte River was absolutely pitiful.  It looked so sad that I even did some research when I got home to make sure I wasn't just imagining things. Nope... Today's average stream flow in cubic feet per second was 334.  The daily average for last year at this time?  5,085.  Yikes.

Anyway, I didn't come to discuss the water table.  I did come to talk about this fun little oasis we found on the Wind River in Boysen State Park, WY.  It was really close to our campground  and the kids had a great time.

I thought the mountains jutting up in the back were gorgeous.  All along the highways there are signs that date the rocks.  Some of them have been dated back to 450 million years ago or more.

We camped at Boysen State Park.  It's very primitive camping.  No hookups.  No showers or sinks.  Big scary hole-in-the-ground toilets.  The first night we were there Averlin looked into one of the toilets and said, "What's down there?"  I explained the setup and she got a HUGE grin on her face. "Hey!  That means we don't have to flush!" Haha.  I never knew she took such an issue with toilet flushing!

When I Grow Up

Friday stunk in so many ways.  The temperature was well into the triple digits. My back hurt from a horrible night's sleep.  The kids were complaining. I missed my husband.  Bugs were overtaking our campground.  The car started to have issues. The National Guard "forgot" to pay us... again... I don't know why I'm even surprised anymore. I was ready to be done.  I almost called it quits right then and there without doing the very thing we had driven all that way for.  I thought, "It's Friday the 13th, and so far everything has gone wrong.  With the way things are going, one of the kids will fall off the side of the mountain during the excavation."

But I forced myself to do it anyway.

I have to do that a lot, I've noticed- force myself to do things that I know deep down I want to do, but don't know if I really want to go through the possible trouble of actually doing them.  I'm almost always glad when I force myself to do things like that.  In fact, I can't think of a single time that I've regretted following through on something I really wanted to do.

This time was no exception.  This was hands down the most awesome thing I've ever done with my kids.  If I had lots of money I would go and do a week long dig with just my husband and me.  It was SO COOL!  I totally want to be a Paleontologist when I grow up.
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I told the girls ahead of time that we might not actually find anything because dinosaur bones are very rare and can take a long time to be found.  I didn't want them to be disappointed if we walked away unsuccessful.  After all, we were only going to be there for a few hours.

Then I heard the back story of how the museum came to be:

One day 2 geologists were backpacking in the area, and asked the rancher who owned the land the museum is now on if they could hike around on the mountains.  He gave them permission.  At some point on their hike, one of them literally tripped over a dinosaur bone that had been exposed by erosion. Today, 20 years later, there are around 40 quarries where bones are actively being found.  Here is a video in which Salem tells you our exciting news:

This is our dig site.  The pile of rocks to the right is everything that has already been sifted through.  To the left, under the shelter is the quarry where we helped excavate.

We were given 3 main tools: a short, coarse paintbrush to dust off anything we were looking at so that we could see it clearly to decide if it was just rock or a rock encased bone, an oyster knife like the one above to stick into cracks and remove rock, and a dustpan with brush to remove the rubble away from the site.  I used a chisel a couple of times when the rock was too hard to remove with the oyster knife.  The cracked rock right under Averlin's hand is the vertebrae we found.

This is Salem holding our 2 pieces of "floater" bone- bits that broke off of a larger bone before it fossilized.  

This is the crowning jewel of our time in the quarry.  Our guide, Amanda, is holding a piece of the cracked vertebrae in her left hand.  You can see the blackness of the fossil.  Her right hand is next to the larger piece of vertebrae which is encased in light colored rock.  Amanda let us observe it inside before she glued it back together.  The bone is given a catalogue number, and our names were recorded with the number as the people who discovered the bone.  I also have the catalogue number, so in a couple years I can call them and find out what type of dinosaur it was from, etc.

Averlin enjoying some nice cold water on a break from digging.

Salem taking a little rest as well.

And, finally, our number.  Our little piece of history.  Very, very cool.

Favorites

After our dig site tour and a couple of rounds through the museum, I asked Salem, Averlin, and my youngest brother Cole what their favorite dinosaurs were.  Here are their responses:

Coming tomorrow: Our super-duper, extremely awesome dinosaur excavation!  We actually found something!  Also, I realized that I missed my calling as a paleontologist- I was like a kid in a candy shop.

More Dig Site Tour

I apologize if the video in the last post didn't work. I should have a chance to fix it tonight. Here are some photos of the dig site tour. Our tour guide, Echo, told us all about the original discovery of bones in the area and showed us one of the 40 quarries that are being excavated currently. The kids loved it. One thing I didn't know is that fossils are a dark black color when they're discovered. The tooth Salem is holding in one of the pictures below is a good example of what you'd find color-wise. The red painted areas are footprints of a Supersaurus which is a massive plant-eater. They have a complete skeleton of a Supersaurus inside the museum and it's 106 feet long! The tour was short, but informative and Echo even let the kids play with some plastic models of the dinosaurs we'd been learning about. I think the most exciting part was the bus ride up to the top of the mountain. It was so bumpy and that bus sounded (and felt) like it was going to bounce into a million pieces. It was a little disconcerting. Simeon held on to me tightly and shouted, "Mom! I'm crashing!" And, Averlin told me later, "I like when we get to wear seat belts better." hehe. Coming soon: videos from Cole, Salem, and Averlin inside the museum.

Dig Site Tour

On our first day at the museum we took a tour of one of the dig sites nearby.  It is thought to have once been a watering place for large plant eating dinosaurs.  It also appears to have been the place meat-eating Allosaurus came to feast on the plant-eaters who were drinking water.  This is a video Salem took of the dig site tour.

Dinosaur Delight

We just spent the last 2 days exploring the Wyoming Dinosaur Museum and digging up dinosaur bones. It has been amazing and I can't wait to share everything, but it will have to wait til I have more Internet connection. We're way out in the mountains right now. Tomorrow we should be back to civilization and I'll be able to post everything.