On Monday we left little “Coach” in the Coach and went to the other side of town to visit The Wyoming Dinosaur Center.

We paid the museum entrance fee and signed up for the Dig-Site Tour.  Cost was $42 for the two of us and our 9yr-old grandson after a veterans discount.

We arrived just in time to go on the next Dig-Site Tour.  The wait time was only 10 minutes before we had to get on the little bus.  So we spent the 10 minutes browsing the museum…

This is “Jimbo” the Supersaurus.

We cut our museum tour short when they announced that the bus was boarding for the Dig-Site Tour.  We would finish checking out the museum once we got back.

Our bus driver/tour guide took us on a 2 mile bumpy and dusty ride to the dig site.

Then he have us a detailed briefing of the site in front of this placard under a small wooden shade structure with a picnic table.

Then he escorted us into the Special Interest (SI) site located under this protective enclosure.

He showed us the footprints and fossils that are at this site.  This is supposed to be one of the only places where footprints and bones are found together in one place.

The red painted spots on the ground are dinosaur tracks.

Typical protective cast used before transporting a fossil to the lab.

The tour guide interacted with the kids in the group.  He gave dinosaur toys (temporarily) to Kaan and another little girl, to demonstrate the type of tracks found here at the site.

Here he uses a cow bone to demonstrate how bones look before fossilization.

View of other dig-sites in the area.

It was an interesting and informative tour.  I recommend it if you’re in the area.

We all got back on the bus for the drive back to the museum.

The nice tour guide gave Kaan his pick of some dinosaur bone fragments from a box as a souvenir.

When we returned to the museum, we finished touring the displays:

After our informative tour of the dinosaur museum, we headed over to the nearby Hot Springs State Park.

We drove around a few of the loops in the park on the east side of town.

We even saw a herd of buffalo, although, no pics this time.

We stopped to examine a few holes in the ground.

And we stopped at an old, dried-up mineral springs.

One of the geysers.

A chainsaw artist demonstrated his work in the Hot Springs Park area parking lot near the mineral bath house.

We stopped at this Bath House for a free soak in the outside pool.  They have you sign in and limit your stay to 20 minutes.  It was pretty cool but a little smelly.  The best part is – that it was free.

There are two other mineral springs next to the free Wyoming State Bath House; the Star Plunge and the TeePee Pools & Spa.  Click on the links to learn more and see prices.

We walked around the park.

This is the back-side view of the Bath House that we were in earlier.

Then we walked along the long boardwalk to view the mineral springs and pools around the park:

The Swinging Bridge.  And it really did swing.

Here you can see many years of mineral springs flow into the river below.

We walked back to the Silverado through the nice grassy park area…

and stopped at the playground, of course…

On our drive through the old part of town we noticed the “Needful Things” shop of Stephen King fame.

And the town statue of a typical Wyoming cowboy.

And that’s all for now folks… we’ll head on south towards Colorado Springs in order to get our grandson Kaan back to his mom and school which starts in another week or two.

Stay tuned…