Dinosaur Adventure: Part I - Texas Memorial Museum

Well we have been living and breathing dinosaurs lately. We've watched Dinosaur the movie, the girls watch Dinosaur King every Saturday morning, they are constantly looking through their dinosaur books, and they are always playing dinosaurs, whether it be battling dinosaurs or whatever else gets in their mind. One afternoon I decided to Google dinosaur attractions to see if we could go to any in May when we move from Texas and while we wait for Tom to get liscensed. I found a website that listed the top ten dinosaur attractions and 2 of them were in Austin, TX and not only were they close, but they were also FREE. Honestly, I felt like I scored one of the best deals ever. Well we were definitely not going to wait for May to do that, so when Tom came home, I told him about the dinosaur places and we decided to go to them on Saturday. The girls were SOOOOOOOO excited.

Saturday rolled around and once we got everyone ready, we hopped into the car and set off on our dinosaur adventure. We should have gone ahead and bought Dinosaur the movie . . . you'd have thought we'd done that by now . . . and have the girls watch it on the way to Austin. It would have been perfect, but I did not have that foresight. Instead they had to settle for 101 Dalmatians.


The first stop on our dinosaur adventure was the Texas Memorial Museum at the University of Texas - Austin. With it being Saturday, we were able to park close by in some of the campus parking spots without being ticketed or paying . . . perfect! As we walked towards the museum, Tom spotted this door and had to take a picture. The sign on the door reads, "Environmental Health and Safety." Looking at the door, they might need to work on that.

While Shelby and Taylor got their pictures taken, the babies waited patiently in their strollers. I still am amazed at how big Declan looks next to Payden. She is honestly going to be passed up in size very quickly. Oh, and can you tell what color our family likes? Orange.

As we got nearer to the museum, we crossed over this little creek. The roots on the tree looked really cool. It was a pretty peaceful scene.

I'm not exactly sure why they had these mustangs there, but we stopped to take a picture anyways. Up those steps and a billion more we could see the back of the museum (although we didn't know that at the time).

We decided to go to the nearby parking garage to see if we could find directions to the museum and we were fortunate that there were signs. After an elevator ride and a short walk later, we saw these replicas of dinosaur vertebrae and I knew we had found the museum. Of course the girls were more than happy to take a seat for a picture.

Right next to this area, we found the Glen Rose Dinosaur Tracks in a covered building with windows to look through.

You can see 2 kinds of footprints. The huge ones are from a sauropod, like Diplodocus or Brachiasaurus. The ones with the nasty looking claws are from a theropod, like Tyrannosaurus Rex or some other two-legged meat eater. Apparently scientists think the 2 animals were fighting. It was kind of odd thinking that dinosaurs had actually stepped on that ground. We talk about dinosaurs, but seeing those prints made them more real. Unfortunately, it was hard to get a good shot because the prints were enclosed in a building, but we tried.

We rounded the corner and finally saw the entrance to the museum. Now for this picture Tom told Shelby and Taylor where to stand; I love how Payden on her own went and pointed to the teeth of the saber-tooth cat. Is she a dentist's daughter or what?

We entered the building on the 2nd floor in the Great Hall and immediately got to see our first dinosaur fossil - a pterosaur called Quetzocoatlus.

There were tons of interesting things in this hall that we had a good time looking at . . . fossils, gems, minerals, bugs, rocks, and so forth. This limestone slab contains fossils of brittle stars and eocrinoids.

The gems and minerals were fun to look at - so beautiful, so colorful, and so sparkly!!

This is the humerous of a Quetzocoatlus.

This amethyst geode was HUGE. They had the lighting just right so that it sparkled. Gorgeous!

There were quite a few displays of bugs. Somehow they are amazing and creepy all in one. The butterflies I'm fine with; it's the creepy, crawly ones that give me the heebie-jeebies.

More cool gems to look at.

This was another amazing, yet creepy display - the colors on these beetles and the variety were just incredible. I know there are millions of bugs, but it was still amazing to see so many varying kinds of just beetles.

After thoroughly checking out the Great Hall, we decided to head down to the Hall of Geology and Paleontology on the first floor - the reason we'd come. While I nursed Declan, the girls and Tom started exploring. There was a little side hall that they looked at first which contained displays on the earliest life and meteorites.

Then they moved on to the bigger hall that conatined prehistoric mammals, reptiles, amphibians, sea creatures, and of course . . . dinosaurs!! These mammoth skulls are just ENORMOUS!!! Look at them in comparison to Shelby.

Here were some of the prehistoric amphibians. I think Shelby's trying to strike a pose here . . . oh what have we created!!

Finally we got to the important stuff . . . the dinosaurs. There were so many that the girls knew - Diplodocus, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Parasaurolophus, Chasmosaurus, Centrosaurus, Pachycephalosaurus are just a few that I remember.

Next to the dinosaur display was the display of prehistoric marine life with this huge fossil of a mosasaur.

Tom had the camera and this is the only dinosaur fossil close-up he took - the head of Pachycephalosaurus. I wish I had known because I would have liked to take one of each of the dinosaurs that the girls were familiar with. Oh well.

He did get a shot of them next to the Diplodocus femur. What an enormous animal is must have been!!

There was another little family there, and Payden found herself a little friend. The two of them ran around and climbed like they were the best of friends.

The girls had so much fun looking at all of the fossils.

That is one huge turtle.

That fish looked pretty awesome although his face looks awfully mean.

Just off of the exhibit hall was the Paleo lab. The sign said it was closed, but there happened to be a senior paleontology student there, so we stopped and talked with him for a bit. Apparently he's going to Seattle to work on a graduate degree in political science when he finishes. What a small world! Not only are we moving to that area, but my brother will be starting grad school for political science next year as well. There was a moment where Payden went up to the counter, looked at the fossils, and preceded to tell him . . . the paleontology student . . . what they were. She cracks us up. She thinks she knows it all. She kept him telling him, "This dinosaurs." He would say something else, and she'd reply, "No, this dinosaurs." It reminded me of the time she was telling Declan about the different colors of his fish . . . she doesn't know her colors because she won't listen to me. She knows names of the colors, but assigns those names to whatever color SHE wants. So we sat and watched her teach Declan all about colors even though she doesn't know her colors. I guess we just need to realize that she knows it all and we don't. :) Funny, funny, funny.

Next we headed up to the Hall of Biodiversity. They had a lot of displays about HIV and AIDS. Apparently, this is what the AIDS virus looks like. Pretty cool!

There were a lot of interactive displays in this hall that we all enjoyed. Here I'm looking at pond scum or something like that.

Here's a giant-sized pond scum.

The girls kept running to each display to push buttons, flip pages, or do whatever thing was there. They really enjoyed the interaction.

Even Declan found one that he enjoyed. He spun that globe over and over. He wasn't really doing it on purpose, but would put his hands on top like this and then when he'd put his weight on his hands he would accidentally spin the globe, knocking his hands off. He was too cute!

Finally we went down to the last floor that we needed to explore - the Hall of Texas Wildlife. I'll have to say that I'm glad I have not seen most of this wildlife up close and personal. It was definitely better seeing it stuffed and behind glass!!

In this display was one thing I have seen . . . an opossum. We had one sleeping under our grill one morning. I found him when I was cleaning up the back patio. I moved the grill and heard the thud of something hitting the ground. I turned and saw a nasty tail sticking out from under our grill cover. I about died. Taylor was out there with me. I grabbed her and ran inside. I ended up paying someone to remove it, but it was money well spent because I was freaked out for the rest of the day. I'm getting chills now just remembering.

Apparently, porcupines have a light phase. It looks so nice and fluffly here.

Much more menacing here.

Here was the section on the fishes of Texas.

This was the section of Texas night life.

Finally we found some more bugs.

I can't BELIEVE the number of bugs in this display.

Apparently, Payden went over to Tom and tried to pull him over to this display so that he would take a picture of her. Nice choice of display for a picture . . . the one with a mountain lion mauling a deer.

Here was the section on birds. These were the ocean birds; I think about 5 of these were some type of gull.

Fortunately the museum was fairly small, so we were able to explore every nook and cranny. We really had a good time. I really love that our girls enjoy museums so much because we LOVE them. I can only imagine what'll be like if we ever make it to the Smithsonian. We would be in heaven and lost there forever. :)

After we finished at the museum, we headed back to the car for the next part in our dinosaur adventure when we realized it was time to take a lunch break. We headed to our favorite restaurant - Red Robin. Even here we lucked out because they were having a deal where kids eat free!!! We saw the signs, but couldn't believe it . . . until we got the bill. Awesome!! Apparently only 2 kids could eat free, but hey we'll take what we can get. We ended up paying only about $6 more than if we'd gone out to a fast food restaurant.

After stuffing ourselves with delicious food and taking potty breaks and changing diapers (except Mom), we were finally ready to head on to Part II of our adventure.