Vernal, Utah

After the Martin's Cove Reunion we headed southeast to Vernal Utah to see Dinosaur National Monument. It was another 6 hour drive in the car, but after the drive from Ogden to Martin's Cove, we seemed up for the challenge. It was a beautiful drive and we all remarked on the barrenness of Wyoming and then coming into Vernal how things seems to be growing again. We crossed the white bridge....I cannot find the name of this and from what I can tell it's just called the white bridge, which is really just a descriptor and not an actual name, but so be it. But we stopped just after this at the Flaming Gorge Visitors Center. They were closed, but they had bathrooms, a welcome relief for everyone!

We stayed the night in Vernal on hotel points from Jared's travel which was great because we had an awesome hotel with two rooms! The one major bummer is that the Chipotle next door was already out of horchata, and shrimp tacos by the time we got in for dinner about 8:00pm and those were the two very things Jared was hoping for! After we got the boys settled, Jared and I ventured out to walk around the Vernal Temple which is the old tabernacle. It was amazing to see it lit up at night!

Filling out their Range Books:

Getting sworn in as Dinosaur National Park Junior Rangers. Liam's smile cracks me up because I know he thought this was a  pretty lame thing to be doing. I'm forbidden to ever tell his friends that he's a Junior Ranger...in fact, I've never been able to even suggest be was a cub scout! Boy scouts are different though, thank goodness. This boy and his image...seriously, check out the sun glasses to boot!

We found this on the way out to the car! They were tempted to bring him home if only we could get him through security!

I think the part of this side trip to Vernal that I will never forget was when I overheard a woman tell her daughter in response to her question of "how did Noah get dinosaurs on the ark?" that Noah did this by putting two of every baby dinosaur on the ark!! What!!! Never mind that these bones are 50 million years old and never mind that Noah or the Bible never once talks about dinosaurs. I chuckled out loud when the mom gave her response until I realized she was serious. This led to a very interesting conversation on the ride home about how 1) there were no dinos on the ark 2) that there are things that we do not know and it's far better to say so rather than make up some far-fetched story that actually goes against the living proof that is right in front of your eyes. Because isn't all truth circumscribed into one great whole!