Dinos & Rifle

We got to Green River Campground in Dinosaur Natoinal Monument just in time to cook dinner Tuesday night.  After our yummy pasta, we headed to the River Trail to take a lovely sunset walk.  Although the only wildlife we saw were two bunnies and some birds, Owen had a great time booshing rocks and it was a beautiful walk.
 


On Wednesday morning we headed to the quarry exhibit center to look at the fossils.  As Jeff noted, it looks fake with how many bones are in the wall, but that’s actually how they were found.  There are a HUGE number of fossils in the rock layer and they decided to expose them while leaving them in place.  There are even a couple that you can touch!



 After seeing the fossils, we stopped briefly at the Swelter Shelter where there are pictographs and petroglyphs which were really neat.  Then it was off to Rifle!


Rifle Centennial Parkis really nice!  It had a cool new playground as well as a splash pad.  Odub loved stopping for lunch here!



Then we headed into Rifle Mountain Park for some climbing!  The canyon was really neat, with steep climbing on both sides and a nice creek in the middle.  The climbing was HARD!  The limestone is so polished it's hard to trust your feet on anything.  



Jeff climbing

Adam climbing

Adam Climbing

Katie Climbing

Even Odub got into the climbing spirit!

After an afternoon of climbing, Adam & Jefe decided it was time to split their victory beer from the grand!

Thursday was spent in more climbing in Rifle Canyon.  More crazy polished routes, but it was fun and we even found one relatively unpolished 10a to finish our day on.




Friday we started by stopping at the Rifle Falls Fish Hatchery just outside the mountain park.  It was a combination of cool and gross.  A nice employee gave Odub a bucket of food to feed the fishes and it was neat to see them jump out of the water for the food! But it's kind of gross and sad how packed into the tanks they are.  The sign said the tanks of little fish hold 50,000!

Fish jumping up the waterfall


Feeding the fishes

You can see Rifle Canyon behind them


After the fish hatchery we split up.  Adam & Jeff headed off to the Black Canyon while Odub & I headed to Colorado Springs to visit my Uncle Chris & cousin Dave and his wife Maggie & kids.  Odub had a great time playing with them!

We stopped at Ford Park in Vail on the way to CS.  It had a really nice playground.



And a pretty alpine garden!

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