The history of the park is that in the 1960s, some excavation began for a new building for the state government. A sharp-eyed bulldozer operator noticed something in the ground and stopped - in his digging, he'd located a fossilized field of dinosaur tracks. Within a week, the governor had declared the area a state park and the building construction was moved to another location. It took a couple of years to clear the stone and reveal the track field, and a museum was built right over the top of it. It was never even shifted from its original location.
We watched a couple of movies in the museum's theater - one about the history of dinosaurs told at a kid's level, and a Bill Nye the Science Guy film about volcanoes (just for fun, I guess). Sunny and Dad listened to a short lecture about the tracks themselves - one of the museum guides went down onto the stone in his socks to point some things out to the kids in the audience. They also listened to a guide talk about alligators (and, I'm assuming, how they're related to dinosaurs, but I wasn't in the room for it.) Posy and Birdie were scared to go into the main display area because there's a model of the dinosaur speculated to have made these tracks, and a recording has roaring noises. They stuck to the education room, thank you very much. Aunt C was still with us from traveling, so they all made bookmarks, played with little toy dinosaurs, and colored.
The real track field - not a model. (I always wonder about that in dinosaur museums - if the bones are real or just models).
Posy, Aunt C, and Birdie making bookmarks with presses.
Sunny listened to one of the museum workers talk about alligators and then got to pet one. (I thought we left the gators behind down in the South. Guess not.)
Magnolia was just happy to be there and do some coloring!
1 comment:
Almost always models. In fact they proudly say when they aren't. Kind of crazy and cool that you had some real stuff.
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