Friday, October 14, 2011

Dinosaur National Monument

After five years of being closed, the Monument has re-opened the Dinosaur Quarry Exhibit Hall!  Tourism suffered when it was closed but hopefully now we will experience a revival.  The building, built on bentonite soil, shifted to the point where it was condemned because it was unsafe.  Ken Salazar came out last week for the opening, but unfortunately, I missed his speech.  Apparently it was a good one.

My daughter and I went out with some friends to visit the area.  There were at least a thousand sandhill cranes down by the Green River.


See all those little dots?  Makes me wish I had a bigger zoom lens!


I did manage to catch a pair of sandcranes flying by.  They live for up to 23 years in the wild and mate for life.


The building and the site looks the same, but different.  We were pleased to see the improvements didn't detract from our memories of the place.


Twelve different species are represented in the wall.




Here's a view of Split Mountain.  The Green River "split" the mountain. It's a great float trip on a raft!


There's nothing quite like a beautiful fall day.  Visit skies from around the world here.

7 comments:

Gaelyn said...

Sure glad the wall view reopened. I'd like to visit Dinosaur again but it's too far for this fall trip. I'd also like to float the Green.

Nice shot of the flying cranes.

Hope all is well.

Sylvia K said...

Great post and captures as always, Loran! Looks and sounds like a marvelous place! Hope you have a great weekend!

Sylvia

Kim, USA said...

Wow I didn't know sandcranes live that long. I just photographed 3 sand cranes few days ago and now I haven't seen them.

Sky Watch

Anonymous said...

Beautiful photos ! I am glad the restoration of the building was true to the original and did not detract from the site or the many memories of the previous version.

Willeke said...

Really lovely!!!!!

Greetings from the Netherlands,

The Write Girl said...

Beautiful exploration. Thank you for the lovely images and happy sky watch.

Linda said...

Looks like you had a very varied visit, from cranes to dinosaurs. Your photos are impressive but it must be quite amazing to see the dinosaur remains for real.