What Came First... The Temple or Dinosaurs?

Our first trip out to Vernal. Brace yourselves for photos!

The drive went by rather quickly thanks to this question game that Kris had.

Pit stop at the gas station for road trip drinks! I splurged and got a soda.

Of course you gotta get your picture taken with the Welcome to Vernal Dino!

The Green T-Rex, well, that guy has some weird buggy eggs, and they light him up at night.  The next day he had a huge cowboy hat, bandanna about his heck, and a lasso. We're hoping that this is a common occurrence where the locals know that the freaky T-Rex gets dressed up, but they don't know who cuz that just adds to awesomeness of it all.

Yes our hotel bathroom had a phone in it. I tried to call Tyler using it. Didn't quite wanted to work. Sad face.

Since we got into town at 2:55 and the next Temple session was 3... we decided to hit up the Utah Field House of Natural History Museum.

Big let down.  At least it was covered in my Utah State Parks Pass.

http://stateparks.utah.gov/park/utah-field-house-of-natural-history-state-park-museum

Digging for bones.

We found this hilarious for some reason.

Tyler tried to touch the fossils. Rebel.

The Dinosaur garden! I can't help but think that with these two dinosaurs, it looks like the T-Rex is telling a really bad joke...

The Temple :)

The best thing that I loved the most about this temple is how simple it is.

Very plain. Very to the point. Perfect :)

 After the session we stopped and had dinner at a place called Country Grub Cafe.

Best decision ever! I would totally go back! Sooooooo good!

The next day, my friend Shawnee met up with us and we headed out to the Dinosaur National Monument.

http://www.nps.gov/dino/index.htm

Man I LOVE our Dinosaur shirts :)

Train ride up to the Quarry. We even got lil dinosaurs to be our mascots for our summer adventures.

Tyler and Kris have Ned, the allosaurus.  We have Patrick the stegosaurus.  Seemed fitting since those two dinosaurs were found all over the Vernal area.

Quarry Exhibit Hall.

Seriously.. this Hall is basically one mega wall filled with fossils! Like THOUSANDS!!! 

They even had some you could touch.  Yes REAL dino fossils you could touch.

We hiked the Fossil Discovery Trail.  It's pretty cool if you think clam shells are cool...

Derek is pointing out 1 of 2 Dinosaur fossils on the trail.

Here's the other one

Derek's a cutie :)

Tyler and Kris :)

Evidence of Shawnee and Kris breaking the rules and checking out the cave where the sign said "not a trail" lol Tyler has video evidence.

There were some questionable petroglyphs along the trail as well.. in the sense that we weren't sure if they were real or recently made by dumb people.

 We ate at Betty's Cafe before heading out.  Another very yummy place!

It was a great trip and was so awesome that we were able to make it out to the Vernal Temple.

Our Temple goal is coming along quite nicely and we're almost done with the family names my Aunt gave us a year ago! I'm mostly excited about that part :)

Next year we're going to go in May when the Dino half is.. and be out there for maybe 3 days so we can hit up Red Fleet State Park and Fantasy Canyon. Maybe McConkie Ranch and Ghost Town... river rafting... there's surprisingly a lot to do in Vernal that would justify a few days.