OGDEN, UT

Ted says, "I want to move here"

GREAT WESTERN ROAD TRIP
St George, Utah...Act 2, in which we ended up going to the Rosenbruch Wildlife Center

We stalked our quarry
Through the forest
While thunder boomed in the distance
and night darkened

The animals flash heads up at us
Appear to come alive
Run, charge, eye to eye

We point at the animal
Angle our weapon at them
Finger trigger presses down
And then that sound,

the polished sound

Of a refined gentleman

Educating us on habitat

And diet, and relationships to others

And we learn what threatens them

Those foreign species

From woods altogether unheard

And now still, in death,

Telling their stories through flesh

Dinosaur Tracks at Johnson Farm

St George Utah
We ended up taking a two day hiatus on our journey in the little town of St George. This stop was primarily the reason we planned such an extensive road trip, as T wanted to see his grandparents from his (step) dad's side of the family that he hadn't seen in the fifteen years since his dad died.

St George was a nice little town, but the way the streets were laid out was driving me crazy, and resulted in us getting lost, a lot. It should have been very simple. Each street was named with a number and a compass direction. Streets running north and south intersected with streets running east and west, each with a number, usually increasing or decreasing by degrees of one hundred, like 100 W, then 200 W, etc. How could that possibly have been confusing? I have no idea. I think part of our problem was that the street the grandparents lived on was a 40. We would go from 200, to 100, and then the streets would hit the other direction and start going up again, 100, 200, etc. Where the heck was 40? Turns out we were on the wrong side of the highway when we first came into town (my fault), and that the streets started up again on the other side. However, this continued to confuse us the whole time. It should have been an easy pattern to figure out, but the deviations were unnerving. It must have been the work of some Mormom engineer whose brain works completely different than mine.

While we were there, there was a cousin (?) staying there as well who was a few years older than our oldest son. We took him with us on our excursions to discover some of the interesting facets of the town. The Dinosaur Tracks at Johnson Farm Discovery Site was one of those places. In this particular region of the country, many distinct and unusual dinosaur fossils had been found, and were on display at this museum. This included two noteworthy artifacts - the Sitting Dinosaur imprint, and the largest single track of a dinosaur walking that had been found. People come from all around the world to study these historical remnants.

The Sitting Dinosaur imprint is unique because one can see where the pubis bone rested, and the tail as well. It is the only one like this in the world, and has helped scientists understand dinosaur behavior and body use better. There were many different dinosaur footprints at this museum that had been found right in the general area, as well as some other parts of Utah.
As much as our kids like dinosaurs, we learned from our visit here that they actually prefer to see life sized replicas of dinosaurs, and their bones, more than they are interested in their footprints and impressions. They especially don't have the patience to hear us read aloud from the information kiosks why the items we were looking at were unique. Frankly, their interest in the entire place lasted only about an hour, and mostly revolved around the videos playing in one room, the interactive display where they could "search" for dinosaur eggs, and the gift shop.
The best thing about going to this museum was that we earned another geocache find, a special one called an "earthcache", from answering a question about what other kinds of animals left tracks here. This answer was not readily apparent when we walked up, but something we had to keep an eye out for when looking at the exhibits.
I think I found the site more interesting than the children did, but they were very happy with a small token from the gift shop and ready to move on to the next sightseeing stop.