Sunday Excursions

When I was younger my family would load up on a Sunday for a ride in the country or sometimes a daytrip to some site that my parents had read about. I particularly remember doing this after we first moved to Texas. My dad had this thick yellow Texas travel book that he kept on the shelf of his nightstand. He would pull it out every so often and find places for us to go. This was one of my favorite books, and I remember going to get it out of my parent's bedroom every so often so that I could look through it.

This past weekend, I had this yearning to recapture the spirit of those days. I pulled out my travel book, which isn't thick or yellow, but serves the same purpose. It describes possible family adventures in every area of Texas. We decided to go to Glen Rose, the dinosaur capital of Texas, to visit Dinosaur World. We woke up early Sunday morning, packed our picnic lunch, filled our thermos with coffee and headed out for our adventure.

We arrived minutes after Dinosaur World opened and were the first visitors of the day to greet the dinosaurs. There was a paved trail that lead us through the park. Every few feet there was a different set of dinosaurs. Hogan ran through the whole trail, while Troy and I kept a leisurely pace, reading the informational signs. When Hogan wanted us to see a particular dinosaur he would stop and wait for us to catch up. He even directed me to take his picture (see the first one) with his favorite dinosaurs.

After finishing the trail, Hogan got to dig in the fossil pit. It's designed for kids to find lots of fossils and at the end of the 15-minute dig, Hogan got to pick out three fossils to keep. He chose the sharpest, biggest shark teeth. We played on the playground for a little while and then headed to the State Park just down the road to see actual dinosaur footprints.

And then we headed back home- my childhood spirit completely sated.