Day 5

    Today we fulfilled some lifetime dreams and went to a dinosaur dig. The dig site, which was just a short drive from the ranch, is one of the most prominent sites in the country, and has produced several full skeletons and landmark finds. It looks like this:


















    The dinosaurs found here are from the Jurassic period, and are primarily sauropods (the giant herbivores, and Emma's absolute favorites). Back in the day, it was once a river bend, where the bodies of drowned dinosaurs piled up and were preserved.
    Part of the group spent a little time at the dig, then went off to see some dinosaur tracks at another location:

The rest of us stayed to help the paleontologists with their work. It was magical. 

This is part of a diplodocus tail. 

This is us sitting on the diplodocus tail while completely trashing the remains of a petrified tree (It had to be done. R.I.P. tree). 

And the guy from Jurassic Park was there. 

In the afternoon Jessica went on the Five Fingers ride into the mountains. Many of our rides require loading horses into trailers and driving to a starting point. The horses seem to do this with ease.

Here is our wrangler Kara. She is on the polo team at Yale where
she is studying to be an entomologist.

There were a lot of very steep ups and downs. On the way down the steepest terrain, Scott's horse put his head down and both Scott and the saddle went right over the horses head. No one was hurt, but it was an amazing sight and a little scary. My fair steed, Sandman, was a pro - thank goodness.

Below you can see 4 of the 5 fingers as we road back to the trailers. On the flat we got to do a fair amount of cantering again. What an amazing scenery to run across.

Every view is different.

The rest of us stayed behind and shot a variety of inanimate objects.

Every night we are treated to a cocktail hour where everyone can drink to their hearts content and select activities for the next day. The drinking instills bravery for the day ahead.

Dinner is family style and we had started to form our dinner family. Here we have Barb and Ken from Arizona, Debbie and Terry from Whitby, England and our crew. We enjoyed each other's company very much.