Fossil Digging, Fossil, OR
Our long awaited fossil dig!
For all you guys who have followed along, you may know how important this trip was to me. I’ve been waiting 16 years to do a fossil dig. Ever since I read about one in Idaho in the in-flight magazine. I’ve been waiting until my kids hit that perfect age of being able to listen, but still having a love for digging and dinosaurs. We finally hit that stage!
As a reward to myself for working hard over the summer and reaching all my goals, I took the family out to Fossil, Oregon for a real fossil dig. It was a fairly short trip and ended up being absolutely perfect.
It started with a long 2.5 hours drive to Fossil, Oregon. When we got to Fossil we headed straight to the visitors center where we took photos with fossils, dinosaurs and got some amazing tips on how to find our own fossils.
We hopped back in the car to our dig site full of excitement! We finally make it to this place that we’ve been planning on going to for years and it’s super sketchy. If you’ve ever been out to Fossil you know that you park at the tiny high school and dig next to the football field – super weird. But that didn’t stop us from having a blast.
After collecting our tools we went in search for the perfect dig area. We spent 2 hours digging up old rocks and breaking them open to find our special fossils inside. It was very special and so much fun! My boys ended up getting tired before I did (I really could have stayed all day). So we went in search of cold lemon-aid in town.
After our lemon-aid break we headed to the Thomas Condon Paleontology Center in John Day. We side tracked a bit and went on random hike to learn more about fossils. Apparently there are a bunch of hikes where you can learn more about the land and they post images and real fossils along the trail. We didn’t get any photos because we had to stop in the middle and hurry back to the bathroom for our little Noah. The museum was fun though!
Our last stop was the painted hills. We’ve seen them before, but how could we not stop there again? My cell phone did a pretty good job this trip to capture our fun! The drive home was filled with old school 80’s and 90’s pop to bug our kids. All in all, an awesome trip that I recommend to anyone!
