What we did and saw (the short versions)
Said goodbye to Kasia and the cats and drove to Yosemite. Camped in the Tuolumne Meadows campground.
Tuolumne Meadows all day, some hiking, very nice. Naama, Tsvika and Amit Tal joined us that evening. Beautiful weather.
Said goodbye to the Tals and left Yosemite. Drove down Tioga Pass (gorgeous) and down to Bishop, CA. Visited Spellbinder Books, then we picked up the 6 across Nevada. Took us 10 hours to reach Nephi, Utah, oh man.
Drove to Arches National Park. Camped in the Devil's Garden campground, very beautiful, and hiked most of the Devil's Garden trail there. Wow.
Left Arches and started doing DINOSAURS! Visited the Mill Canyon Dinosaur Trail, just north of Arches. Looked for the Sauropod Footprint site near there, couldn't find it. Went up to Price, UT to visit the College of Eastern Utah museum, and from there went about 30 miles south to the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, which is where the CEU museum gets most of its fossils.
Drove to Vernal Utah that night. Got lost on the way, but saw Provo Canyon.
Vernal Utah, gateway to Dinosaur National Monument, and home to many silly dinosaur sculptures. Visited the Douglass Quarry, a most excellent place, no longer a working quarry, but a lot of stuff left to show what came out of the ground there and what it all looked like. Lots of allosaurus and camarasaurus. There are other sites in the boundaries of Dinosaur NM that are being worked, and they have at least one dino that still has no name.
Drove through Dinosaur, Colorado to the actual entrance and visitor's center of Dinosaur National Monument.
Back to Vernal for lunch, and drove north to Rock Springs, Wyoming. Camped in the KOA from Hell there.
Gladly shook the dust of Rock Springs WY off our tires. Drove up to Thermopolis WY to visit the Wyoming Dinosaur Center, one of the best places we visited on this trip. Drove to a dinosaur tracksite (photos) in the middle of nowhere, between Graybull and Shell WY, it was amazing. Drove to Buffalo, WY that night. This was the last really warm weather we had for a week...
Drove up a real interstate freeway (for once) from Buffalo WY to Bozeman MT to see the Museum of the Rockies. Very very nice museum, great paleo staff, let us see/handle all kinds of stuff. This is where many of the 9 or 10 T Rexes that have been found can be seen, big wow. Snow in the mountains outside Bozeman that night...
Took it easy, just drove three hours to Great Falls MT. Shopped, went to a movie, out for lunch.
Drove north to Chouteau and Bynum MT, both have good museums/dino stuff, inc. a replica of Seismosaurus at the Two Medicine Dinosaur Center, huge huge huge. Lots of Maiasaurus, this is where the Maiasaurus nest was found. Crossed the Canadian border, no trouble at all, very quick. Went to the museum at Devil's Coulee, another egg site. Ended up in Lethbridge, where Doug was thrilled to find the reproduction of the site of one of his favorite historical stories, Fort Whoop-Up. Participated in the Great Fort Whoop-Up Cattle Stampede of 2004.
Drove to Drumheller. The Royal Tyrrell Museum. A whole (very big) museum completely dedicated to paleontology. HUGE wow. Took a walking/fossil hunting tour of the badlands where it's located, checked out the town (and I thought Vernal UT had a lot of silly dino stuff, oh man!), checked in to our excellent hotel, Heartwood Manor and relaxed.
Visited the Museum all morning til it got crowded (many children), did a plaster-cast workshop, went back to our hotel and relaxed, came back and spent the evening in the museum when it was quiet. I fell totally in love with the Burgess Shale, a period that has hitherto left me completely nonplussed.
Spent one more morning in the museum. Got in touch with a guy who has a shop called Palaios (used to be PAST), where they do casts and reproductions of skeletons (many dinosaur, but some not) for display in museums and other places, got a full tour of everything they do, wow! Spent the evening in the community center at a slide show given by a Royal Tyrrell paleontologist about digs in Mexico that he has been participating in for the last two or three years.
Drove from Drumheller to Spokane Washington. Nuf sed. Stayed with Liz, glad to see her, more glad to get out of the car.
Drove to Portland, OR. Visited Powell's City of Books (yay!) and met Signe at the house, saw what's happening to it, very exciting! Had dinner with Signe, Rhiannah and Nicky. Drove to the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Newport, OR.
All day at the SB Hotel. Quiet day. Walking. Reading. Eating. So nice. Sitting here typing this watching the ocean outside the windows. Oh yes.
Drove south to the Del Norte Coast Redwoods State Park and camped.
Drove home. Glad to be back. Whew.
