RV trip Spring '19 part 1 - Dinosaur Valley State Park

My friend Susan gave me this gorgeous Indian Blanket plant for my birthday last week.

She got it to remind me of the RV trip my husband and I took over Easter.

A major highlight of the trip was the profusion of wildflowers, including Indian blankets.

taken with my cell phone

Texas Indian Paintbrush. These are often seen on the side of the road mingled with bluebonnets. I've never seen them this close up until this trip. Really spectacular! This one is especially clear as i took it using my new tripod.

more Texas paintbrush

These tiny flowers looked like they just had yellow dots in the center until I zoomed in on them. Then I saw the center yellow part is on a stock and sticks up.

Indian Blanket

Our ultimate destination was Enchanted Rock. It's in Texas about four hours south of here by Google's estimate. RV time, however, isn't the same as Google time. We have learned to double whatever Google says our time will be.

And since we haven't yet managed to get away on the first day of any trip as early as we want, we decided it would be good to break the trip and camp for a few days at Dinosaur Valley State Park (DVSP) in Glen Rose, Texas, an easy hour and a half from home.

As the name suggests dinosaurs figure large there--both from the distant past and the not so distant past, as you'll see below. Fossilized dinosaur footprints were discovered there in the Paluxy River in 1908. According to the park's website, there are two kinds: "Sauropod tracks, large elephant-like tracks believed to have been made by Sauroposeidon proteles." And "Theropod tracks, smaller and often with a distinct three-toed pattern, believed to have been made by Acrocanthosaurus."

Getting to the fossilized theropod footprints in the next picture involved stepping somewhat precariously on rocks to get to the other side of the river. We put on our water sandals and made our way carefully across. John carried my backpack as I'm not as steady on my feet as he is. There are many other fossil footprints but most of them are not visible until summer when the water level goes down. Hopefully we can go back some time and see them in person.

Fossilized theropod dinosaur footprint we saw in the Paluxy River. I believe this is in what they call the "Blue Hole" site. It is a little north of the "Ballroom" site on the park map. 

 This sign shows the "Ballroom" site that is only visible in the summer. I guess they know not many people want to visit Texas at that time of year so they gave us a picture!

And then there is the not quite so distant past:

John reading about this Brontosaurus model. It and the Tyrannosaurus model below were commissioned by the Sinclair Oil Company for its "Dino Land" exhibit for the New York City World's Fair of '64-'65

Tyrannosaurus. Its mouth no longer opens and closes like it did at the World's Fair. I found a fun YouTube video of these and the others at "Dino Land" from that World's Fair. I'll put a link to it at the end of this post.

Wow! John found a theropod footprint in the side walk! Imagine, maybe it was hiding behind that tree until the work-men's backs were turned ;-). We had fun pretending anyway. Then I noticed that tiny smudge of white next to the "footprint" and snapped the next photo. 

A true wonder of nature! Those inconspicuous little flowers are amazing up close.

We found these similar looking pink flowers on another day. Any idea what they are called?

We took lots of walks and hikes. The weather was unusually nice the whole time and there were always lots of flowers.

Texas blue bonnets. Our state flower.

close up of Texas Bluebonnet. I was surprised to see pink on them too.

One path had these by the hundred. They were so tiny my camera wouldn't focus on them until John held one between his thumb and forefinger. This also gives some idea of the size.

One of my favorites: Wine Cup.  I've never seen inside them.  In our home, area on the rare occasion when we see them they are too far off the path to look inside.
 I noticed this one that we saw earlier in the trip looks like it has cottage cheese in the middle. Is it pollen?

This Wine Cup several days later looks quite different in the center. I guess it is more developed. Maybe a lot of bees and butterflies came and took the pollen away?

Some of our hikes required wading across the Paluxy river. After the first trip across balancing on the precarious rocks to see the (real) dino footprints we discovered a cement walkway just below the surface further down stream and used that most of the time after that.

Here I am just starting out on the cement walk way. It is difficult to see in some lights but it is definitely there.

Our longest hike at DVSP was up to the scenic overlook. We went the long way around as it wasn't such a steep a climb. What it lacked in steepness it made up for in length!

Basket flower? seen on our overlook hike

This tiny little flower likes rocky places in the middle of the path. It is so deep and dark inside it was hard to get a good photo of the center. I lightened this up some so you can see its star like center standing up on a stock

A view from the overlook. I think John took this one

The scenic overlook. I didn't like to get too close to the edge. It was very windy up there and a long ways down. We enjoyed a break and ate our picnic lunch. We had to hang on tight to everything to keep it from blowing away.

At the bottom of this photo, taken from the overlook, you can see people crossing on the the stepping stones to see the dinosaur footprints. This was taken with John's camera. It has more zoom range than mine.

On our last full day camping at DVSP we went canoeing. The photo above shows the area we canoed in. The Paluxy has a lot of shallow places and rocks so we couldn't go very far. But we enjoyed going back and forth and around in circles several times. It was still pretty and perfect weather for it--cool and not too sunny--though it rained a little. At the top of the above photo is the beach where we put in. And at the bottom just before the stepping stones is where we turned around. It's a bigger area than it looks here.

This fascinating little flower was hiding in the "weeds" near the beach.

Another, bigger flower but still pretty. I took these two with John's camera while I waited for him to bring the canoe.

a view of the river from the beach. we didn't go this direction.

Another view from the beach this time in the direction we canoed. You can see part of the underwater cement walkway. We launched the canoe just past that.

Layers of limestone along the edge of the river.

This is where we turned around. The people on the left are in the dinosaur footprint viewing area. On the right is a staircase leading down to the stepping stones.

We arrived on Sunday, April 14. We left for Enchanted Rock in Llano county on Thursday the 18th.  I didn't realize how much we packed into such a short time until I wrote this post. I'll save the Enchanted Rock visit for the next post. Hopefully that one won't take me as long as this one has!


Notes:
* Here's the link to the World's Fair video on YouTube. It's called "Sinclair at the 1964 New York Worlds Fair." The "DinoLand" portion starts at 9:28. Although it is essentially an advertisement for Sinclair Oil Company it is also an interesting window into the past. I was amazed by how dressed up everyone was.