A Dino Spring Break!

Do you see this picture? This is what Leslie does when she is nervous or in deep deep thought. She finds curls in her hair (which is not hard to do) and puts her finger inside the curl and twists it. She did this our entire Spring Break vacation to Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose. We tried and tried to explain to her that dinosaurs lived a long long long time ago but she still did not comprehend the time issue. She kept asking if we will see and feed the dinos as we drove to the park on Sunday. She and Nolan were extremely excited to go camping, but Leslie was a little apprehensive. We told her that she had been here before and that we will see footprints and replicas at Dino World. It was a beautiful and hot day when we arrived, so once we unloaded and set up the trailer we rode our bikes down to the first footprint site called the Blue Hole. The water was amazingly blue and deep in this particular spot of the Paluxy River. The kids wanted to go swimming so badly, but we didn't bring the right equipment for swimming. So we waded in the water on a rock and enjoyed the cold water. Afterwards we headed back for dinner and a board game.

The next morning we hit some trails on our bikes to see some more dino prints in the river. It was so amazing to see that these enormous creatures walked this land. I mean, there is not mistaken that some huge animal made these imprints.

Then visited Dinosaur World right outside the state park that had over 100 life size dino models set up in a winding mile walk. It was super neat and well kept. However this is what Leslie did most of the time.

Here are some pictures of that exciting day.

The park had a Fossil Dig where the kids were handed a sifter and a bowl to collect any fossils they found in a huge sand pit. The got to keep three fossils they found.

However, the Dino World did not last all day, so we decided to go to Wal-Mart. I don't know how or why, but every single camping trip we always end up going to Wal-Mart at some point. This trip was for a new bigger bike for Leslie. She had a really hard time keeping up with us while we biked all around the park and her knees hit the handle bars. Once again she started.......

She was nervous about a new bigger bike and thought her falling down would be more damaging, but once we found a purple princess bike, she was cool with the idea. The rest of the day was spent biking on neat trails through the woods. Leslie had no more problems keeping up with us from then on.

On Tuesday we biked more. I asked Leslie if she was enjoying her bicycle and she replied, "Yeah, but my bobo hurts!" I dyed laughing because it finally dawned on me that that's why my butt hurt so badly. We had biked so much that we were so sore by the time we left! The trails were so fun and the kids enjoyed it. But OwEEEEEE!

Like I said on Tuesday we got up and went trail riding more and then visited Fossil Rim. No, we did not drive through the safari of animals because to be honest it was over priced! It would have been $78 for us to drive through and not even guaranteed to see exotics! That is not even counting the price of food to feed the animals! I thought it was ridiculous, so we decided to go to the scenic overlook and kids' petting zoo for free instead. The kids enjoyed it just as much because they got to pet goats and see an Ocelot.

This was in the goat pen!

Afterwards we were running out of things to do in Glen Rose and we knew the weather was turning bad, so we decided to go to Big Rocks. It is a special place on the Paluxy River that has huge rocks on the river side. I have grown up driving past this place and even have been there many times, but it was so different visiting with your own children. They loved climbing and observing the rocks. We even got to see a Water Moccasin Snake in the water!

Later we went back to camp and packed up so that we would not be packing in the bad weather the next day. We drove to my mom's for dinner and then headed home. Now we are just sitting here on the rest of our Break and looking outside at the horrible weather. We are glad for the rain, but not the 40 degree coldness.