Dinosaurs – RDZ Photography

Dragoon, Arizona – March 2023 – Dinosaurs of the Desert

Not far from the Amerind Museum is the Rattlesnake Ranch. While we visited we didn’t see any live snakes, but did see plenty of dinosaur’s – giant metal sculptures.

The only snake we saw was this sculpture.

The sign said if the gate was open you were free to wander about – so we did.

Nearly all of the sculptures were done by Mexican artists.

The grasslands and mountains gave an aura of authenticity to the dinosaurs. Jurassic Park in Arizona.

Mixing ages with a horse against a dinosaur.

A true Arizona feature – a Gila Monster.

There are a few non dinosaur/animal sculptures around including this one honoring the Native Americans who once ruled this area.

If you ever find yourself traversing Southern Arizona on I-10, take a few minutes to check out this great roadside america item.

Vernal, Utah – May 2022 – From Dinosaurs to Flaming Gorges

History, Nature

The small city of Vernal, Utah is in the far northeastern corner of the state. It is a short distance from two impressive, albeit very different, landmarks.

First is Dinosaur National Monument. While the entire park contains archaeological sites, as well as impressive canyons and rivers, it’s fame is due to the ‘Quarry’, an excavated wall with over 1500 dinosaur bones dating from 149 million years ago.

While some complete dinosaurs were removed and shipped to the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, the wall retains the ‘scraps’

This important wall is preserved in an enclosed space.

While most are fragments, washed upon a long ago sea, one is nearly whole.

The remainder are scattered about.

Just north of town, at the Wyoming border, is Flaming Gorge. This reservoir is a result of the damming of the Green River at the Flaming Gorge Dam, towering 500′ high.

The resulting reservoir is immense, covering 3.8 million acre feet of water.

The Flaming Gorge comes from it’s location (among others) in Red Canyon, with it’s vertical walls accenting the water.

La Leona, Argentina – January 2020 – Three for the Price of One

History, Nature, Sciences

In our travels across North America we have visited the Badlands in South Dakota, seen fossils in Arizona, and dinosaur bones in Colorado. In Southern Patagonia we had the chance to do this all in one place, La Leona.

And because it happens to be on a 30,000 acre ranch owned by one person, it is very restricted as to who can go there. We arranged a tour through one of the agencies in El Calafate, and were very pleased the next morning to see a mini van come to pick us up. Our group had 7 people, a driver and the guide!

The area is about 1.5 hours north of El Calafate – the scenery was fantastic along the way.

After a long drive up a bumpy dirt road, we got out and took off through the badlands.

It wasn’t long before we came upon the first dinosaur bone. They have been removing nearly full dinosaur skeletons from here for more than 20 years, so what is left are the ‘scraps’.

Still very impressive, they welcome you to touch them, hold them, and examine them – just leave them. They even gave us instructions on how to tell bone from rock – lick them. Or rather, lick your finger and press it against the object. If it sticks it is bone, otherwise it is rock.

There is even interesting vegetation throughout.

Our hike through the badlands continued with our guide Roci, until we reached the ‘petrified forest’. Roci was very knowledgeable and gave an excellent overview of what we were seeing, and how it got to be that way.

It is amazing how heavy small fragments of the petrified wood weighs.

We spent about 3 hours wandering around the badlands, finding plenty of petrified wood, and the occasional dinosaur bone.

What an amazing place, and fantastic day. To be able to see and touch these wonders of nature was great – and with such a small group at that.

Cincinnati – January 2019 – Museum Center Exhibits

Architecture, Art, History, Nature, Sciences

Our first trip of the year always seems to be down to Cincinnati, and 2019 started out the same. We were headed to the Cincinnati Museum Center for a guitar exhibit (in a separate posting), but since we were there we checked out the rest of the exhibits that we could.

The Cincinnati Museum Center is in the 80+ year old Union Terminal, and anything that age needs a little love now and then. The Museum Center has been in a mult-year refurbishing program, and as such much was still closed (but the remainder is scheduled to open in the spring).

Still the annual holiday train display was present.

Nearby was a Lego dispay

The display featured numerous Cincinnati landmarks including the famed Roebling Suspension bridge.

The Cincinnati Music Hall

And a Baltimore & Ohio Railway Freight building.

The Natural History Museum is still closed as well, but they do have a nice dinosaur exhibit open in the meantime.

Chicago – December 2018 – The Field Museum

Architecture, Art, History, Nature, Sciences

Our major museum visit this trip was to the Field Museum of Natural History. It is known as one of the premier natural history museums in the world, and attracts millions of visitors per year.

We were here to learn about natural history.

As we entered the lobby we stopped by a small kiosk with a display of bugs.

Our first hall major exhibit we toured was the Hall of Ancient Americas. This wing covered both North and South America.

Each region featured pottery, sculptures, jewelry and more, and started with South and Central America cultures such as the Aztec and Inca (and many more)

The final section included the Northern Cultures. While similar to the southern cultures, these featured more large scale sculptures like the totem poles.

The second level featured Griffin Hall – a large dinosaur exhibit.

The most famous is Sue – the most complete T Rex ever discovered. For some reason there was unusual lighting on Sue when we were there.

One the main display the head is a cast of the original, which is in the next room in a display so you can inspect it closer.

We paid a brief visit to the cultures of the Pacific

Our final stop was an Egyptian display, including mummies.

Columbus – November 2018 – Science Center Revisit

Art, History, Nature, Sciences

In checking the events calendars for something to do I noticed COSI had a model train exhibit, so we headed down for a Sunday morning.

We headed straight to the upper floor exhibit area where the model trains were set up. Disappointingly we found they are the same ones we see set up elsewhere (such as the fair, etc).

While nice, we were hoping for more.

One unique one though was this group who have built their entire train display from Legos. The tracks, the trains, the cars, are all built out of Legos!

Outside along the hallways are a number of art pieces made out of scrap material. Among other things this one has piano keys, roofing metal, paint brushes, a garden hose and other ‘stuff’.

All sorts of pieces/parts including license plates.

A giant frame skeleton hovers over all.

This display shows the miles and miles of veins and arteries in the body.

I wish I could remember what this was, but I can’t. No worries – he looks cool.

One exhibit that they have had since the 1960s is the exhibit ‘Process’. This shows an American street at two different times, one in 1898 then the same street in 1962 (which is when the center was opened at it’s original location).

It was amusing to see teenagers all running for the various corded telephones, as most under 15 have never used one.

We happened to be next to one of the presentation areas when they were starting an exhibit on chemistry where the presenter entertained us with liquid nitrogen and others like potassium and their reactions to hot and cold.

On this display she had someone give her a $20 bill, dipped it in hydrogen and set it on fire. In the end the person got his $20 back unscathed, except for being wet where she ‘rinsed’ it.

She also demonstrated how different gases make different colored flames when exploding (yes they were very loud booms)

Honda is a big sponsor, with a display on automotive components such as how pistons drive engines, how shocks work, etc.

The American Museum of Natural History has a very large display that is being presented for a year or so. There were a number of fossils on display.

There were many on exhibit.

The display was very large, and very well done.

Some were models to show the full size of the dinosaur.

But the actual fossils were best.

Eastern Montana – National Parks Road Trip – Day 6 – Makoshika State Park, Pompey’s Pillar and Billing

History, Nature

Another early start – so early the hotel wasn’t offering breakfast yet, so we continued our westward trip on Interstate 94, stopping at a truck stop with a Subway for breakfast egg burritos and orange juice. Breakfast was tasty but a little spicy.

Welcome to Montana

Crossing into Montana, we exited at the town of Glendive to see fossils of dinosaurs at Makoshika State Park.

We hiked the Diane Gabriel Trail that led us to the site of a Hadosaur fossil. The fossilized bones were not easy to spot until we looked at the small bones available for us at the viewing platform and compared them to the natural area of the exposed fossil. At that point, we could identify the fossil. Hey, we touched dinosaur bones! That is not something you get to do every day.

Sadly the days of no speed limits in Montana is over so I had to settle for setting the cruise control on 85 for the trip across sparsely populated Eastern Montana. We saw miles of wide open ranges of wheat-colored fields dotted with black cows. The range spans to a backdrop of mesas and rocky mounds that extend from the Badlands of North Dakota.

Another of our breaks from the drive was in Miles City, Montana, where we checked out the Range Riders Museum. The museum had local heritage and history displays. We touched large dinosaur bones, saw saddles, tools, guns, wagons, arrowheads, native beadwork and photos of native tribes and even early settler’s homes.

Just east of Billings is Pompey’s Pillar, a National Park. The park boasts a signature of William Clark from the Lewis and Clark expedition. A nice museum came first exhibiting items from the expedition when Lewis and Clark explored this area and the Yellowstone River. Exiting the museum you can follow the trail and climbed a steep flight of 215 stairs to the observation deck to see where Custer’s troops protected the railroad surveyors 60 years after the Lewis and Clark expedition.

One of the noteworthy sights at Pompey’s Pillar are the signatures that the early visitors carved into the side of the stone, most noteworthy being the name of William Clark, protected behind Plexiglas. We walked the path near the pillar to find a stone slab replica of the Clark signature and also petroglyphs and pictographs for handicapped persons to see who are unable to climb the steps.

The large stone pillar is named after Sacagawea’s son that Clark nicknamed “Pomp” or Pompey. Sacagawea was the Shoshone woman who helped Lewis and Clark. She and her husband Toussaint Charbonneau, a French Canadian, travelled with the expedition from Fort Mandan.

After completing the tour of Pompey’s Pillar we continued on into the city of Billings, Montana, and continued to the bluff overlooking town called Rimrocks.

The Billings airport is set on the rim so that airplanes slowed above us to land on the runway across the street. The Rim Rock is an area that was part of a great inland sea 80 million years ago that once covered an area from the present-day Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic north. Some areas of the sandstone cliffs are nearly 1400 feet high. A river much larger than the current Yellowstone river carved a canyon to create the rim rocks.