Thursday July 24, 2014
 
Non-Travel Day
 
This morning because it was raining we had to alter our plans for the morning, so we started off by going to the “Utah Field House of Natural History State Park museum” . The museum specializes in the states ancient past, including 150 million year old dinosaur bones, fossil specimens, reconstructed dinosaur skeleton, research lab, and numerous exhibits on the dinosaurs and the Jurassic period. This was an enjoyable and enlightening morning. Our
next stop was east on US Rt. 40 and the “Dinosaur National Monument”. After viewing the film on the park at the Visitor’s Center we took the tram to the “Quarry Exhibit Hall”; this is an area that had been excavated to recover thousands of dinosaur bones, and when the scientists determined that all the remaining bones were of the same kind that have already been recovered they determined it was best to leave the remaining bones visible for the public to see, and the park service constructed a roof and 3 sided exhibit pavilion against the mountain side. It is amazing that so many bones are visible on the side of the mountain. The exhibit hall also included interactive and interpretative information on the exhibited bones, and general information on the period of time when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. After spending a lot of time in the exhibition hall we took an auto tour of the Monument that included pictographs and petroglyphs, a pioneer log cabin, views of the Green River and an explanation of how the river cut a path through the mountain, and views of an excavation site. The area is still an active dig site where several universities and museums are currently engaged in removing bones and fossils.