Dinosaur National Monument

I mentioned before that Nic has been moonlighting a lot in Roosevelt, UT. This has resulted in him being gone for a week here or there all summer long. (In fact, he is in Roosevelt as we speak. And I am 38+ weeks pregnant. Yeah. We are hoping for a nice calm weekend). Well, a few weeks ago the kids and I decided we were going to head out to no man's land and visit Roosevelt. Lucky for us Roosevelt is only a few miles away from Vernal, UT which is only a few miles away from Dinosaur National Monument. We found lots to do to occupy the weekend and really enjoyed our time on that side of the state. While Nic is there he is the only functioning radiologist in town (Roosevelt) and so he was tied up for a lot of the time, but he was able to break away every now and then to play with us. We stayed one night in the town home they offer to Nic in Roosevelt, and the next night we spent in Vernal. I found that I really liked Vernal. Its a cute little town.

Day 1:

The kids and I drove to Roosevelt, visited Nic at the hospital, played in the park in the rain, and then headed to the town house (which was super nice). We ate at a nasty restaurant (Roosevelt is NOT known for its culinary...well...anything) and got a good nights sleep.

Day 2:

Nic had to work so the kids and I headed to Vernal to check out the Dinosaur Museum and the Rec Center. 

Here are the kids posing in front of what I quickly learned was the "old" museum.

Here are the kids pretending to be dinosaurs in the garden of the new museum.

That would be a T-Rex claw.

The museum itself isn't very big, but it was nice. And the kids were both free, so I certainly can't complain.

In the movie that they play it showed how fossils are formed and when Mason saw the formation of a leaf fossil he got really excited and immediately following the movie we had to go out to the garden to find this sidewalk imprint that he had seen earlier.

I told him to smile creepy like this dinosaur. He did pretty well.

The rest of day 2 was spent at the Rec Center in Vernal. They have a pretty fun indoor swimming area and the kids and I spent five hours there. Most of these hours were spent around the playground thing that is surrounded by about 2 feet of water. My big, fat pregnant body trying to float around in such a shallow amount of water was likely the most unflattering thing the people of Vernal had ever experienced. That combined with the fact that Sage wanted me to take her down the tiny tube slide like 400 times (every time I would "beach" myself at the bottom and have to "scoot" myself out) made for an extremely ridiculous sight (eventually I got her to do it on her own, but it was a little daunting for a small child). Luckily Mason's favorite was the extremely fast moving "Lazy River", so I did get some time in water that was actually past my waist. The kids had a blast and again, we all slept well that night.

Day 3:

Nic took the morning "off" (aka clinging to his pager, ready to bolt at first beep) and we headed to the Quarry in Dinosaur National Monument. This place was really cool. Its basically a big wall that was once a river bed and therefore has hundreds of huge fossils in it. They just built a big building around it and its pretty impressive.

(P.S. Try to ignore my general roundness. This pregnancy has resulted in some serious swelling issues. Oh. And I'm like 8.5 months pregnant.)

Sage mapping out our plans of action.

After the quarry, Nic headed back to Roosevelt and the kids and I headed deeper into the park to check out some petroglyphs. These too were impressive. Actually, the whole place was pretty interesting. I would recommend it.

Slanted Rocks. The geography of the area is really interesting.

We ended our trip at Josie Bennett's cabin. This lady lived all alone in this cabin, without electricity or any modern amenities, until her death. She was actually connected to some pretty famous outlaws and had kind of a cool story.

And she had some seriously cool property. I might consider living here without electricity too. Or maybe not. But it was cool.

"Welcome to my home!"

After our trip to the cabin the kids and I headed back to Salt Lake. It was a quick trip, but the drive there is absolutely beautiful and we all had a really great time.