Museum of Ancient Life- Dinosaur Museum

The Museum of Ancient Life Dinosaur Museum at Thanksgiving Point in Utah has the distinction of being the world’s largest display of mounted dinosaurs. Apparently.

It’s a short drive outside of Salt Lake City, it took us about 30 minutes to get there from our hotel. By car. I bet you figured that part out.

I can assure you that is the most educational thing you’ll get from this blog post because I am NO prehistoric era genius, in fact I had to Google how to spell genius just now- but here are some photos of what we saw there with my excited kiddo Bexon, age 5.

These first two pictures are just the exterior walls of the joint. You can imagine how this riles children up. Give them sugar and they can fly past the ticket counter without paying.

Some of the dinosaur skeletons were so huge, I couldn’t even fit a whole one in the picture.

And others were so tiny I wanted to take them home as pets. If they were alive, I mean…you get it.

Bex saw the horn on this skeleton above and asked “Was that one a Unicorn Dinosaur, Mommy?”

“Yes,” I replied knowingly, “Yes it was, honey.” Now that is awesome parenting, I tell ya. Just make stuff up. They don’t know any better.

Both Bex and I had the flu that day and this above photo of Early Man (or woman) is what I felt like, so it’s a wonder we even got there at all.

There was a lot of interactive stuff for kids to do like dig in sand for “fossils” and get scared senseless that a fish like this could attack them under dark waters someday:

AHHHH! And now for something more calming to my womanhood…

I love the dinosaur eggs. It’s amazing how this one is perfectly round.

And how these cracked eggs in sort of a “nest” stayed preserved is incredible to me.

This one looked like some kind of crazy big mouthed dinosaur pelican. Don’t quote me on this in science class, kids.

All in all, it was pretty awesome, man.

We happened to go on the one day of the month that admission was only two dollars, so it was crowded with families and kids, but it was a bargain. Here Bex is wearing his dinosaur bones shirt and looking lost amongst the kid’s sand and water play tables.

Later this week, I’ll post some photos of our visit to the Natural History Museum of Utah. I hate to say it, but I think between these two dinosaur museums near Salt Lake City, they have a more impressive collection than anything we have here in L.A.

Here’s my husband and child about to have their heads bitten off by some scary undersea monster. Moments after this, Bex wilted and had to be carried to pass out in the car on the way home. Poor monkey.

That concludes our travelogue for the day, so if you’re ever near Salt Lake, check out Thanksgiving Point or just lie and tell people you’ve been there now that you’ve seen it from the safety of your home computer.

I’ll never tell.

XOXO-

~ Heidi