Dinosaur Ridge

We visited Dinosaur Ridge last weekend, near Denver.  It's a ridge in the foothills that has a lot of dinosaur artifacts.  Years ago they were buildilng a road up on the ridge and they found dinosaur bone fossils, fossils of dinosaur tracks and a lot of other fossils.  Now there is a little museum there and for a small fee you can take a tram up on the ridge to see the bones.  Here are the kids at the museum...look out!  There's a dinosaur right next to you!

 They had a little dig site for kids to excavate dinosaur bones.  The kids had a lot of fun with that.

 Grant checking out some colorful dinosaurs

In another dig area Matthew found a fossil (a copy of a fossil).  Any "fossils" they uncovered they got to keep and even got a little bag and a description of the kind of organism it was.

 I think Anna found a shark tooth

The ridge is closed to regular vehicles (just the museum tram and bikes can go up there) but you are allowed to hike it, and Scott found a good place to park where we could hike up and see most of the stuff without hiking too far.

 Here we are hiking up

It was a good thing there were signs showing some of the dinosaur bones, 'cause I wouldn't have picked them out on my own.

 More bones

The view from the ridge to a formation called Red Rocks (looking west).  They have a big outdoor amphitheater there somewhere.

 Anna looking toward Red Rocks

 An interesting rock formation.  We thought it looked like an egg.

 And a view from the other side of the ridge (looking east now)

Scott said on this side we have a nice view of the new condos going in...the other side was better.

 And walking back down

 If you want to see what a good Daddy looks like...here's one

Scott carried lots of children down the mountain.  I just pushed Grant in the stroller.  So Dinosaur Ridge was cool and I'm glad we got to see it and that we hiked up instead of taking the tram.