"A geologic map is a textbook on one sheet of paper" - John McPhee

Two weeks ago, I set off for a 36 hour road trip to Utah with two coworkers, a man named Russell from town, and his dog Cortez (see picture below) to Dinosaur National Monument.



In addition to the over 1500 fossils at the Dinosaur Quarry inside the National Monument, Vernal, Utah has has a great natural history museum and more chicken-friend lunch specials than I've seen anywhere in my life.

We left Steamboat Springs in the evening, drove 3 or 4 hours across the Utah border, camped out, and had Fat Tire by the campfire.



The next morning, we changed out a car battery in Vernal after having to call up a park ranger to help us jump the car, visited the natural history museum (by the ranch maintenance man Bill's recommendation), had an "Eye Opener" at a local coffee shot (brewed coffee with a shot of espresso), touched fossils at the quarry, hiked up to see some pictographs and old homestead property as the sun was setting, and headed back to Colorado. On our way back to Steamboat Springs, we turned down an offer for a remarkably low-priced box of "loose sirloin steak" from a 35 or 40 year old man named Brian at the gas station claiming to be a Vietnam vet....

Grabbed some Mickey D's and headed back to the ranch as dreams of dinosaurs danced through our heads.





Perfect company. Perfect amount of time. Perfectly acceptable place to be openly and passionately excited about science, dinosaurs, and geology.