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.