Our hunt for the native Dinosaurs started out like most of our adventures… unplanned and unprepared!
This State Park is divided in half with a North and a South access, but there is no road connecting the two within the state park itself. We looked at the mountain bike trail that connects the two but the route was over 5 miles one way… and I don’t know about you, but I was done getting lost on my bike for the day. And besides, I wanted to take Watson on this hunt and he’s an old man… we would never make it that far running. So, I grabbed my camera and we jumped in the truck to headed to the North Access gate.
On our way out of the park, lo and behold, there’s the Longhorns I have been searching for for 3 days!!
I tell Chris we need to stop because this may be my only chance to see them and take their picture to add to my bingo card! I jump out of the truck and there is this beautiful HUGE speckled Longhorn, I raise my camera to take a picture and that is when I realize that this adventure was no different than any other adventure I ever go on! “DEMO MODE” reads across my camera screen and I am officially the most amateur of amateur photographers! I forgot to put my memory card back into my camera after my earlier photo session and blog post!!!!! AHHHH!!! “Chris, we have to go back, I forgot my card”… Back to the RV we go!
By the time we made it back up to where we saw the Longhorns, they had already started to move on… Only a few longhorns remained and I took a few quick photos before jumping back in the truck to head out on our hunt!
We were finally on the road headed to the North Gate… again! Using my AllTrails, I found us a parking spot right next to the connecting trail that led us to our hunting grounds… all was fine until we realized my connecting trail led us to a river crossing that was not crossable!!! AHHHHH!!! I pulled up the map and realized that there was no way to get to where we needed to be without crossing the river. I saw that we needed to drive back out of the park and take an unmarked road before the bridge and that would lead to a parking area at the trail head. So, back into the truck we went, we found the road and finally found our trail head…
From the minute we hit this trail, we were transported to a landscape that was wild and mesmerizing and pokey!
Prickly Pear cactuses as far as the eye could see! In the golden light, this landscape glowed and its natural beauty was like nothing I had ever seen before.
As we came up on a rocky tree lined river bed, I knew we were close and we would soon find the secrets this landscape was hiding from the world.
Dinosaur Tracks are special!! Not always perfect and you have to know what you’re looking for…. but I have to say, these were the easiest tracks to spot!
You’re looking for a pattern of impressions, even sizes and evenly spaced! They were walking and left their paths for us to find!
These tracks were relatively small compared to those I have seen in the past, but they were there, clear as day!!
Some paths led up and down stream, some crossed the stream and the trail ran cold… but this river bed was COVERED in tracks of different shapes and sizes. My research indicates that these tracks are from the Lower Cretaceous period and were created 104 million to 115 million years ago!! Yea, I’m a nerd and I LOVE this stuff!! How cool is it to walk where they walked, to see their paths fossilized in time. They left their mark on this world and I was here to witness it…
Today, we found the Dinosaurs!!
