Trip out of town!

On Monday the kids and I threw Granny in the car and headed to Bozeman for some fun. I had wanted to head back to Bozeman to see my old friend who gave birth to TWINS this summer, and take my kids to the museum (which I'd never been to myself!). Another friend in Bozeman, who makes several trips a year to Uganda, said that he'd take a suitcase over for us on his next trip in October, so we had a suitcase full of 2nd grade curriculum and Christmas presents from Granny for him. So away we went for a fun filled day in Montana!

First stop - the Prairie Dog Town State Park in Greycliff!

Do we spot some prairie dogs?

Yes we do!

Here's Granny, trying to entice a lil prairie dog out of a hole with a peanut

Next stop - Susan's twins!

Here we are fighting over one twin. Granny was hogging the other!

Lovin' them some baby! These babies were amazing. So tiny, perfect and clean! Plus, they are my old friend's (of 20 years!) which makes them even more sweet!

Museum of the Rockies

Next stop was the Museum of the Rockies, which holds the most dinosaur bones in the whole entire world. Many of them found right here in Montana - many in Carbon County and some only 10 miles from our house!

This is obviously a fake replica, but they had several Triceratops skulls that had been found in Montana, on display. Some remains have also been found in Alberta.

As seen by their faces in this picture - the kids were half afraid of some of these mannequins! This is a dienonychus, which was one dinosaur whose teeth were found about 10 miles from our house.

This little fellow was a plesyiosaurs, and was also found in Carbon County. That's really interesting as it was a water dinosaur and well, there is not a lot of water in Carbon County, let alone the rest of Montana! Hello flood!  

And here is our neighbor, the Tenantasauras, that was found about 10 miles from our Montana home, near our friends ranch! In fact, their names are even displayed in appreciation for letting the field crews cross their land to get to the dig sight :) I remember when this happened as I was about 11 or 12 at the time. That's a pretty good fossil!

Granny, reading about our neighbors and the Tenantasauras

The kids, flanked by the vicious Dienonychus that used to roam these parts!

A Dienonychus, attacking a Brontasauraus

The museum has a pretty good dinosaur display, but it's not really set up so much for kids. However they do have a great Yellowstone display for kids that my youngsters really enjoyed! Me, I like the dinosaurs ;)

Cool bison, made with an assortment of objects

Eagle with binoculars

A chicken or our national bird? Couldn't decide.

Chicken fight?

A cool bear, made out of an assortment of objects

Fishing! The kids LOVED this!

Little fisher Frankie, making up for the fishing trip he missed this summer

Ella on the cool bobcat, made of assorted objects

Eagle fishing. Isn't this how they do it?

All in all, we had a great day, visiting friends and being tourists in our own State! We met up with our friend and his wife who were taking my suitcase, and had lunch at Applebees, so we really did have a great day with friends and dinosaurs! It really is amazing to know that this was a main stomping grounds for so many different kinds of DINOSAURS years back. Who would of thunk? What a cool place to be from!