Labor Day Weekend

Aside from the usual family drama, my trip home to Connecticut for Labor Day weekend was a success. As usual, J accompanied me on the 4-hour drive. We met my mother for dinner at her favorite bar, talked about my pressing need to see a dermatologist and lit a bee hive on fire...a normal evening with mom.

The point of the trip was to get in one last weekend of fun before school began (well, before school began for J...I started in August). I've been keeping a folder at work called "Stuff I Want to Do," and inside was a printout of instructions on how to make a plaster cast of Eubrontes footprints at Dinosaur State Park. In a last-minute attempt at doing something out of the ordinary, J and I decided to do dino stuff...which is not out of the ordinary...for us. We also decided to spend an afternoon in West Stafford at Diamond Ledge, digging for quartz crystals.

Prior to Labor Day weekend, I don't remember when my last visit to Dinosaur State Park was. I do remember being slightly disappointed about the size of the museum, but that was probably because before that, my last museum experience was at the Peabody, which is huge.

Anyway, I was REALLY impressed with Dinosaur State Park. It's small, for sure, but it's got a lot of good information about the Eubrontes trackway that was uncovered at the site. They had a "garden" with varieties of trees descended from those of the Mesozoic. The museum also had a really impressive gift shop and book store.

J and I spent a good amount of time there, reading all the information the museum had to offer, deciding which fossil replicas to buy, making a cast of a footprint and walking on the various trails behind the museum.

Diamond Ledge was perfect, too. We met a family from Rhode Island in the parking lot and hiked out to the dig site with them. They were wonderful company and we all found a lot of nice specimens to take home.