Dinosaur Footprints

We spend most of our vacations visiting with family or friends, which is nice because we have limited vacation time and far-flung relatives, so we enjoy seeing them as much as possible. But at some point last year, it occurred to me that the only trips we've ever taken by ourselves have been two overnight trips to the zoo and one weekend camping trip. And none of those seemed to really count as a vacation. For one thing, vacations should be longer than 48 hours, right? And for another, vacations should involve hotel pools and strange places and perhaps theme parks.

I started thinking about all the places we could go to and all the things we could see and after dreaming about the possibilities for a while, I found myself in the midst of a conversation with the children about how cool it would be to see real dinosaur footprints. Luke suggested that we go to some place in South America (as Luke is wont to do) and Weston suggested that perhaps we could go to Extra-Planet (as Weston is wont to do) and I got to work researching more practical places where we might encounter dinosaur footprints (as I am wont to do.) All that research turned up a place in Massachussetts that had a random trail of dinosaur footprints and since I have an odd obsession with New England, I was intrigued by the possibilities. Once I found out that some of the possibilities included a park with Dr. Seuss characters and hole-in-the-wall museums and a nearby Six Flags, I was sold.

So a couple of weeks ago, we loaded up the kids, the dog, and an unrealistic number of bags and headed north towards dino tracks. It was pretty much the perfect trip because the kids are old enough to not cry endlessly in the car, but not so old that they think everything is boring and trite. They thought the dinosaur footprints were amazing and the museum was amazing and Six Flags was really, really amazing. But most of all, they thought the unlimited access to TV at the hotel room was a-maz-ing! They even enjoyed the icy cold pool, despite the fact that they started shivering and turning blue about 45 seconds into our pool adventure.

I continued the trend of forgetting to take pictures by...forgetting to take pictures. But! I did remember to get some at the dinosaur footprint place, so at least there exists some evidence of this trip. Someday, when my children tell me we never took any vacations, I'll be able to point to the following:

What happens when you leave your sunglasses in the car at a rest stop? If you ask nicely enough, you get to borrow Mama's.

This is Weston's current favorite pose for pictures. I...don't understand.

Of course, it rained for most of our visit, so we ended up balancing precariously on a rocky, wet hill. Still, it was fun! Here, both kids have their hand in a footprint.

And here's Weston standing beside a footprint. He had to demonstrate just what the dinosaur might have looked (and sounded) like.

Can you see them?? We all had fun taking enormous, dino-sized steps in this line of footprints!

Weston quickly got bored and moved on to building "dams" and "islands" in the footprints.

Walking in dinosaur footprints!