A warm howdy from Golden
South Table Mountain seen from Golden Colorado
Looks like the mountain top from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
On Day five of our cross country drive, we arrived in Golden Colorado to a warm greeting from our friends Alan, Mercedes and Nyx.
We stayed in a hotel outside Colorado for a two day visit. During our stay we were able to catch up with friends, recuperate, visit local attractions and have our Mini serviced. The engine light triggered because a filter sensor needed to be replaced. The long drive from Boston finished off the old filter, the work was covered under warranty. The visit to the Mini Dealer meant I would spend a part of the second day in Denver area dealing with repairs while Rise and Mayari hung out at the hotel pool. The good news was that we spent the rest of our extra time with our Denver friends, and we had time to explore Dinosaur Ridge.
Rise and Mayari with a lifesize painted sculpture of an Iguana don, which is the type of dinosaur that left its foot prints in the sand.
Dinosaur ridge http://www.dinoridge.org/
We were really excited to see dinosaur ridge on day 6. Dinosaur Ridge is a plot of land with fossilized dinosaur bones and foot prints are embedded in the stone hillside. There are dinosaur remains and footprints from many dinosaur migrations millions of years before the earth shifted and transformed Colorado into mountains. At Dinosaur Ridge you can interact with fossilized dinosaur bones and foot prints in a rock wall. The footprints were imprinted during the Cretaceous period millions of years ago, when the Colorado area was more low lying marsh lands. When the surface was still soft enough to be imprinted on by the Iguana-don type of dinosaurs which migrated over this surface. As time passed on the mud was covered by other silt and mud, add millions of years, shake up the earth and you get fossil imprints in a sandstone rock wall.
Makes me feel like the geology of Earth is alive and that we were travelling through time.
You can take a walk on the trail to the other side of dinosaur ridge to see a bone quarry from the Jurassic era.
Basically a pile of fossilized bones embeded in the rock wall. Less impressive than the footprints but still accessible and cool to see.
Mayari using special glass crayons on the windows of our car to send messages to fellow travelers.
The cat is back on the road...
Next stop Utah
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