With smilies on their faces we rolled out of Montana this morning. The kids really did not want to see the adventure conclude. Riley even suggested that we stay until grandpa comes back down to California. I offered him a ride but he is going to stay a bit longer. I'm looking forward to coming back.
The aviation museum was great. We got to look at several old planes that were flown specifically around Montana.
The boys teamed up on one jacket and the girls teamed up in another. We tackled this one.
In the field they cover the specimen with burlap and plaster which they call the "jacket". Using the tools of the trade (dentist pick, small brush, little bit of water) we gently picked out everything covering and surrounding the fossil without breaking everything. Which also meant that we had to inspect every piece to determine if it was a fossil or just junk.
Before the day begun we had no idea but now we can all definitely identity them.
Riley wound up exposing a huge piece of the large bone. Everyone got really excited and started running around to put a special solution on it to preserve it.
Such a great day.
We decide to change it up for the second half of the day to do learn how to do lab work.
So we headed to the second dig site and were told that there was 7 active grizzly bears not far away. Now its starting to make sense why we BOTH had to sign releases.
We walked out to the site and sure enough there were tracks all around. While everyone was watching the ground I was scanning the ridge line and kicking myself for desiding to leave the knife in the van several miles away.
Lucky nothing came out to welcome us.
This huge bone was fused with rock. Riley and grace were the first to find it out of the group.
We were brought out to an active dinosaur dig site. We all found fossilized dinosaur bones! Jessica found the biggest out of the whole group. The best part we got to keep one each.
