2010 Dino Camp

So we just spent 4 days in Central/Eastern Utah camping and exploring a variety of dinosaur associated sites in the Price area. On Monday we arrived and set up camp at the Huntington Reservoir State park. It was a very nice camp ground with a lot of grass but little shade. The biggest benefit though was that it was empty. There were 22 sites and no more than 5 were full each night. We had a simple meal of roasted hot dogs and then spent the night eating a wide selection of S'more variations. These included using Keebler Fudge striped cookies, Chocolate covered Graham Crackers, Grasshopper cookies (Mike's favorite), using peanut butter cups instead of plain chocolate, A banana boat (banana sliced open and stuffed with marshmallows and chocolate and heated till the chocolate and marshmallows melt, Ben's favorite) and the classic S'more (Becky's favorite). (Charlie, Brigit and Jacob were content to eat the various ingredients uncooked.)

We began Tuesday with a lesson in Baseball (I never realized how difficult this would be to teach). Ben and Charlie had gotten Balls and Mitts for Easter and had been practicing throwing and catching for a bit. This week we introduced the Bat. We had both Ben and Charlie hit the ball. Ben from a soft pitch and Charlie from in improvised tee (my hand). They both did great with it and we will try to attach the video of Ben hitting the ball.

Of course this was the hottest day of our trip and we chose this day to visit the Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry and go for a hike. The Quarry was about a half hour away (14 miles of that over dirt road), and includes the single largest source of Allosaurus bones in the world. One full skeleton was there on display and more than 40 others are on display throughout the world. We were able to see an excavation site and then spent some time hiking around the Quarry. There were several trails and we chose the moderate difficulty 1.5 mile trail and took of walking and looking for dinosaur bones. I thought that 1.5 miles would be easy even with Jacob on my back but I did not count on having to travel at the slowest pace or that we were truly in a desert. We spent about 2 hours on that trail. Ben did an Awesome job of leading us (though he did keep confusing the trail with dried out water creek beds. Charlie did well for about the first mile. Towards the end he got really tired but he did finish the whole thing. Brigit did fine though she did need to be carried occasionally. And Jacob fell asleep on my back. It was a fun adventure.

After returning to camp we spent the rest of the day and all of Wednesday pretty much recovering and trying not to get any worse sunburns. Being right on the reservoir we were able to get into the water a few times and cool off there and just enjoy camping in general. Wednesday night I tried my hand at Dutch oven cooking for the first time and it did not go too bad. We had BBQ chicken which was great but I had trouble baking the Potatoes at the same time. We'll have to try something different next time.

On our final day, Thursday we headed home through Price with a stop at The College of Eastern Utah's Prehistoric Museum. It was a neat place to visit with several full skeletons including a Mammoth, Saber Toothed Tiger, Short Faced Bear, Wolf, Allosaurus, Raptor, Ankylosaurus, Stegosaurus, Triceratops, and many others. The kids were able to dig for bones and they had a great time.

With this being our first major trip of the summer I think we have stepped off on the right foot.