Dinosaur Valley State Park

In the interest of time, I decided to skip a few catch-up posts. So, now instead of 7 or 8, it will be more like 4 or 5. There's a lot to be said for efficiency.

On a beautiful weekend in March, Joe and I headed to Dinosaur Valley State Park for an afternoon of hiking. We haven't visited too many state parks but on our 1st wedding anniversary, I bought Joe a book about hiking in Texas and this state park is in there. It's only an hour or two from our home, so we decided it was a great place to spend an afternoon.

As you drive in, there are two huge fiberglass dinosaurs. The 70-foot Brontosaurus and the 45-foot Tyrannosaurus Rex were donated to the park in 1970 by the Atlantic Richfield Company. They were from the Sinclair Oil Corporation's 1964-65 New York World's Fair Dinosaur Exhibit. The tracks were, unfortunately, under water as we have had a ton of rain in the last year. We'll have to return to check those out and we were there for hiking anyway!!!

We quickly discovered that to get to the hiking trails we had to cross the Paluxy River, which winds through the park. We decided to first cross at a narrow spot where a lot of other people were crossing. It was beneficial in that a lot of the slime was rubbed off the rocks and we made it across without incident. It was also beneficial because we saw some beautiful parts of the park that we would have missed if we had stuck to our original plan.

We did end up at the original river crossing point that we first passed on and decided that come hell or high water (pun intended) we were crossing here to head back to the car. With the help of a large stick that a stinky little boy loaned me, I made it across without incident. But, I seriously doubt I would have made it so easily without the stick. On the other side, we took a couple of pictures and then gave the stick back to the kid and headed to the car.

It was really a great day. I was totally exhausted at the end of it, but it was worth it. I hope we will have many more weekends like this in our future.

The fiberglass dinosaurs:


Our first river crossing point:


The Paluxy River from a scenic overlook on the Yellow hiking trail:


Joe on the hiking trail:


Our second river crossing point and a photo to prove we did it!: