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Summer in the Rockies- on the Dinosaur Track
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It is said that play is a child’s job. This summer travel through time with your tots without leaving the Rockies- on the Dinosaur Track. There was so much dinosaur activity in Colorado that local children have an unusual opportunity to experience history first-hand in a creative, exploration that will ignite their imaginations.
Go through Colorado Springs and take a dip in the warm, natural hot-springs en route Westward, refreshed by your soak and the tots soothed, you’ve arrived at the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center in Woodland, CO 18 miles west of Colorado Springs. Children will be fascinated at RMDRC watching real archeologists at work on recently discovered bones and other finds. They can role play at Woody’s Paleo Playground’s dig site, and participate in activities like "create a dinosaur", and dinosaur "rubbings". They will see life-size display of dinosaurs, prehistoric marine reptiles, pterosaurs and fish of North America's late Cretaceous period.
Visit Dinosaur Ridge Natural Landmark on your prehistoric adventure---One of the world’s most famous dinosaur fossil localities is in our backyard. Apatosaurus, Diplodocus, Stegosaurus, and Allosourus tracks have been preserved in their natural environment.
Dinosaur Journey in Fruita, CO is a hands-on, interactive museum complete with paleontology displays, a working laboratory, a collections room where scientists study dinosaurs and other animals, a simulated earthquake ride, a dinosaur library reading area, a sandbox for making your own dinosaur tracks and a “quarry site” where kids can uncover actual Jurassic dinosaur bones. Also, check out the One Day Dino Dig that the Museum of Western CO offers throughout the summer. Riggs Hill Interpretive Trail, just Southeast of Fruita, is the paleontology hotspot site where the Brachiosaurus was first discovered, and it is the first area dinosaur dig site. The .8 mile mini-trek offers expansive vistas of Grand Valley. Also nearby, Rabbit Valley Natural Research Area - a three mile roundtrip "Trail Through Time" offers an array of significant dinosaur specimens still preserved in ancient stream channels on 286 acres set aside as a natural area. Managed in conjunction with the Museum of Western Colorado Dinamation International Society and BLM.
Explore the jagged, sandstone hills of the Dinosaur National Monument where the largest land animals roamed free. While the main exhibit wall is closed, fossils are visible a short 1/2 mile hike from the Temporary Visitor's Center. Along with fossils, wildlife such as bighorn sheep, eagles and other birds of prey abounds along monoliths.
A bit closer, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science has the Prehistoric Journey exhibit and offers Dinosaur Dig camps in July.
Each of these scenic and leisurely excursions from the Denver-area are colossal adventures for young children.
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