Dino Valley State Park

After driving through the safari park, we drove a few miles up to The Dinosaur Valley State Park. There are actual fossilized dinosaur footprints here as well as areas for hiking, swimming, fishing, and picnicking. Most of the tracks were made by a two legged meat eating dinosaur called an Acrocanthosaurus. The other tracks were made by a Pleurocolues which is a huge 4 legged plant eating dinosaur similar to a brontosaurus. The tracks here in the park are 110 million years old, and they have even found bones from these dinosaurs too!

At the entrance to the park, there are two fiberglass models; a 70-foot Apatosaurus and a 45-foot Tyrannosaurus Rex. They were built, under commission of the Sinclair Oil Company,  for the New York World's Fair Dinosaur Exhibit of 1964 - 1965.

These dinosaurs are models at the exit of the safari park...

And these are the World's Fair Dinosaurs



In these next pictures, Wayne and Nathan, are pretending like the T-Rex is chasing them :)

Take 1

Take 2

Take 3

Run Nathan!

Before going to look for the tracks, we stopped at the visitor center for Nathan to pick out a souvenir. And he found a dinosaur that he really liked and didn't have in his collection. And, it turned out to be one of the ones that made the tracks! He got the Acrocanthosaurus.

We had to go on a hike down to the river bed to see the tracks. Nathan LOVED this part. He said he felt like he was in Jurassic Park!

Here's the footprint!

After looking at the tracks for a while, we walked back up the trail and let Nathan lead us down some more trails. Along the way, he kept saying that he found more fossils and was very excited about it! There were fossils all over the place! They may have just looked like rocks and pebbles to us, but Nathan could tell they were really dinosaur bones and teeth :)

After our big adventure, Nathan was one tired little boy. We stopped to get some ice cream right outside of the park, and he didn't even finish it. We had such a good time! And our little paleontologist slept the whole way home!