Mother's Day 2012- It was a good, good day.
 First we eat Garlic Knots.  Don't forget to dip them in the marinara sauce.

 With my "baby" and his babies.

 Now we have garlic knot pizza. 

 Ian almost ate a whole basket of knots and then a couple slices of cheese pizza.

 Miss Melanie can also eat lots of knots and pizza.

 Ian wanted to go to the Museum of Nature and Science so Alison and I let the others go home and we took Ian to the Museum.  He fed the sabertooth tiger, played in the Discovery Zone and then created stars in space odyssey with "too much mass", his favorite.

 We picked up Grandpa and went to Smart Cow Yogurt for a delicious treat.

I chose the pistachio and expresso flavors in a twist.

Dinosaur National Monument Fossil Quarry

Today we visited the newly renovated fossil quarry.   A ranger leads you up to the quarry from the visitor's center in a car caravan.   You are up there for about 40 minutes.   What was so surprising was that the paleontologists are no longer working on the rock quarry and the lab inside the building is gone now.  It just doesn't seem right not to have the excavation of dinosaur fossils going on right before your eyes.  Where are the guys in the white coats and hard hats with the drills and picks?   We visited this building in the 60's and the 70's and didn't realize that bentonite clay was causing the cracks and the windows to separate from the structure.  There is only one paleontologist there now and he works offsite.   The ranger did tell us that there are building a site by the field house in Vernal that will house a lab for extracting the fossils from the rock.

After a stop at the visitor center gift shop, we drove to the Colorado side of the monument and drove up to Canyon Overlook.  We had our picnic lunch here.  We were still 15 miles from the end of the road at Harper's Corner and wanted to stop by the visitor's center on the canyon side.  Unfortunately when we got down there, it was closed and not opening until May 15. 

Vernal is booming with the quarry opening again and the oil and gas business on the rise.  The Marriott was sold out and they told a prospective guest that they were even oversold.  A Town Place Suite was being constructed next door.    The Best Western where we stayed in 1969 and 1978 is still there.  

 The Newly renovated Quarry house.

 This was cool.  You can now stand by the wall of fossils and touch then.   Larry at our picnic table at Canyon Overlook.

 How the quarry looked in 1958.  The round structure was the gift shop.  It is no longer at this site.  Some of the fossils that were left on the rock site.

 Below is view looking into the canyon.

Tonight we are staying in Steamboat Springs and our dinner here was a 100% better that our dinner in Vernal.  I may even have to make a comment on Trip Advisor about them.  Vernal still doesn't have any good places to eat, other that fast food or the Utah favorite, a steak house.

Rifle Falls State Park

We are finally making the trip to Dinosaur National Monument in Northwest Colorado.   The Quarry House had been closed for renovation and then reopened last fall, but everytime we tried to drive here, there was a snow storm.  We are in Vernal Utah tonight and will tour the Quarry tomorrow.  The last time we were here Michael was 3 years old.  I had read about Rifle Falls in John Fielders book so we took advantage of driving in this direction to have our picinic lunch and then hike to the falls.   It certainly isn't Iguazu Falls ( these were the falls we saw in Argentina) or Yosemite Falls but still a nice stop on the way to our destination.