Dinosaur Footprints

The day after a ride on the Texas Eagle, what do you do?

Well, you breathe a sigh of relief when your next ride shows up in time to load the car and head out to a diamond of the Texas Park system, Dinosaur Valley State Park. We arrived early enough to check out all three sites of dinosaur footprints (without extreme overheating).

But first we took the required photo with the giant fiberglass dinosaur models at the entrance to the park. It seems these creatures were created for the New York World's Fair of 1964. DH lived in NY City then and saw them in their first location. We visited Dinosaur Valley a few years ago and on that occasion he shook his head and said, "This looks just like the one from the World's Fair." And, upon reading the sign, he discovered that it was.

[I suppose it is only fair that New York give the park something since the records show a huge section of the riverbed was removed and is currently in the dinosaur area of the American Museum of Natural History. It is one of our favorite museums and I have seen the tracks there, but in hindsight, perhaps a cast of the tracks would have been more appropriate.]

The Paluxy River was low and murky on this visit. But we found footprints at each location.

On our first sojourn onto the rocks of the riverbed we looked and looked and tried not to be disappointed. Then the nephew said, "Look! That sign says TRACKS." And he was right. Across the river was an area of tracks roped off so that people wouldn't damage them.

Nothing but rocks.

Nephew looking at the tracks (see part of the sign just behind him)

These tracks are near the bank in the "blue hole" area. Of course the swimming hole was really yucky green. The best track is seen at the top of the photo in the water near the center of the dry rock.

We followed a short trail down to the water for our last look at dinosaur impressions. This may have been the most impressive. It looked interesting close up, but really shows best in the photos. Go figure.

See.

We were told to look for tracks "and a tail drag"

The best we could tell this is the tail drag.

DH and DN compared their feet and the tracks (Duly noted was that DN wears a larger shoe than DH. Wow!).

Boulders on the bank

Bank of the Paluxy

It is hard to see the tracks unless the water is low, but I was a little sad at the state of the river. I love a clean flowing river.

Still there was adventure enough for the day.

In addition to the tracks we saw many cardinals, dragonflies and bees, a mass of grasshoppers clicking and jumping all around us, a big bed of old fashioned red ants (you almost never see those anymore), and a snake.

Yes, our friend Jake the snake was waiting for us on our first search for tracks. We were walking around on the rocks when DN shouted "SNAKE!" and backed up.  I froze. I didn't see the snake and was afraid to move. After much shouting and pointing, I saw the snake (probably more frightened by us than we were by him). He swam towards the open part of the river and then stopped. It was almost as if he was posing for his closeup.

I did not get close (grateful for telephoto lenses).

There may be more photos of Jake, but this is the best unedited one. See him resting on the middle rock?

We left Dinosaur Valley wanting to know more about these creatures who walked our state. The volunteer in the gift shop talked about fairly recent discoveries of bones and the naming of the Texas State dinosaur ( http://www.statesymbolsusa.org/Texas/Dinosaur_Brachiosaur.html ).

We left Dinosaur Valley with memories (and a T-shirt).

It was time to head south - to Hico for lunch and a look around.