Dinosite

Wes and Jenske gave me a ride to the museum in time for the Dinosite adventure scheduled for 10 a.m. Six of us went, including Ed and Marlyn, Tom, Wes, Mike, and I. Our "science educator" was a graduate student in Museum Studies interning for the summer at the museum. He led us out to the micro-site located in the Dinosaur Provincial Park, adjacent to the museum grounds.

There we "prospected" for small fossils washed down from above. Phil showed us some samples of fossils we might expect to find, including dinosaur rib bone fragments, petrified wood with crystals, turtle shell, crocodile skin, clam shells, and teeth. The members of the group, including several small children, spread out to hunt. I found a couple of fossilized bones, including a small rib fragment and a piece of a vertebra and some petrified wood. Everyone put their finds on a pile, and then we had "show and tell." Phil passed around some of the finds, including tracings of plant material in iron rocks and some fossilized pine cone sections. Afterwards we spread out the fossils for the next group to find.

Next we walked to a partial dinosaur skeleton in situ (meaning lying where the bones were found). The dinosaur, a duckbill herbivore, has been nicknamed Rusty because of the rusty iron rocks where the bones lie. We saw some vertebrae, a toe bone, leg bones, and the pubis, but the skull has not been exposed (or else it is missing).

After the hike I joined Ken in the auditorium to watch a short video called "Pond Scum" about the formation of oil from the compression of microorganisms in the ancient seabed that covered Alberta.

After a picnic lunch, we walked through the remaining exhibits that we hadn't seen yesterday. The museum has abundant fossils from a variety of eras, and they are displayed in dramatic and appealing ways. The highlight is a large room filled with dinosaur skeletons, displayed in lifelike settings with murals of what they might have looked like in life. Just amazing!

On the way home we stopped for diesel and did some shopping at the Dollarama and the Canadian Tire Store (not a tire store, but more like an Ace Hardware plus auto center and garden center. We bought some hollow wall expansion anchors, and when we got home, we used one to re-attach the valance by Ken's chair, which had fallen down again. It fell the first time in April 2008, when it was still under warranty, and was (more or less) reinstalled by Camping World. I think we did a better job, and we hope it will stay up this time. We also checked out a problem with my chair that Ken had noted. It looks like some parts are bent and it's hard to tell if we'll be able to fix it.

We all took our dinners to the Evans' rig to eat. Nanci brought out a bottle of Illinois wine that Dennis and Linda Apple had given them, inviting everyone to try it out so we could tell Dennis and Linda how much we had enjoyed it.

When we walked back to our rig, we decided to check out a problem Ken had noticed on the roof. It turned out that we had bent the mounts on two of the solar panels and ripped the vent cover off the refrigerator, so we'll need to arrange for some repairs. This might have happened when we were parking our rig at Lake Louise. We thought all was well at the time so we didn't climb on the roof to check things out. Meanwhile we taped some plastic loosely over the vent, hoping to keep out the rain (if it rains) but allow the fridge to vent.... "RV" stands for "repair vehicle," we know, but this is a real streak of bad luck.