Virtual Tour Dinosaur Resource Center

National Park, Colorado Springs, CO

Pike's Peak, and the Kissing Camels, among other peaks and passes described on the chart at the gift shop:

Halfway through the loop of the Park, we came upon the gift shop.  Lovely items for sale, and very educational as well.  A trip to Colorado would not be complete without seeing GOLD, and Fool's Gold.

Made especially for this gift shop, these aspen wooden vases are made from standing dead aspen trees.  Of course, we purchased one!

The view from the parking lot of the gift shop

Pike's Peak behind Heidi

and the rest of the loop through the park back to the highway, where Heidi is photographed next to the entrance rock

TUCSON, PHOENIX & APACHE JUNCTION

ARIZONA

A huge fossil turtle shell

He smiles!

A tourist Old West town

Glenn probably telling Dale he is a wuss about something (smile), all just having a good time

Dale, panning for gold, he couldn't resist:

Oops, a goofy Saguaro cactus formation, you can draw your own conclusions of cactile dysfunction

How can I get this on the plane?

Okay, so Heidi photographed lichens brave enough to grow here too:

A beautiful view of the setting sun over the mountains, a fitting end to the fruitful and fun day:

Our last breakfast together the next morning, off we fly!  What a memorable and long overdue visit.

GOURD SHOW, February 2007

Wuertz Farm, Casa Grande, Arizona

Pinal County Fairgrounds

Link to info on current gourd show dates:

https://www.wuertzfarm.com/

PHOTO CREDITS to our friends Dale & Renee Lee, who experienced the show themselves, we regret we were not with them!  Enjoy the fantastic amount of creativity, color and themes using gourds as the medium

This group of photos  is SO comprehensive that we have opened a new category just called "Alaska" to view this trip and the June-July 2006 trip, here is a link to it:

Alaska

OCTOBER 2006

TRIP TO FLORIDA TO DR. GORDON HUBBELL'S PRIVATE MUSEUM OF SHARKS

Here is a link to the full page needed to display his incredible collection, on Sharks page 15:

Dr. Gordon Hubbell Shark Museum

Andy Griffith town, note this car dealership featuring the police car made famous from this television series, what a hoot!

JUNE 21 through JULY 8, 2006

This group of photos and description is also so large that we moved it to the "Alaska" category starting on page 3 here:

Alaska Page 3

1105 S. Ocean Blvd. and 12th Avenue South,

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Shown from Ocean Blvd., and from the ocean side.  Young friend Josh is digging to China, it appears:

Yes, you read that right.  This "Latest Travel" is just 20 minutes away from our house.  Yet, because we live here, we rarely visit the beach unless friends come to visit (Frank and family from Virginia):

Frank's youngest son Noah posing here near one of the pools...

 bowling alley

indoor fun room for kids

pinball and arcade games.  On a subsequent visit with friends, we played till we were hoarse and they closed the arcade for the night.  Worth every penny we played there.

outside (and inside) restaurants

and those to-die-for views of the 60 miles of perfect beach that we love so well...

Frank's family had a full suite with kitchen that was quite affordable...

Florida, Georgia, South Carolina

Billed as the "Smallest Church in America", a pleasant place to stop.  I believe this was in Florida:

Here's something you don't see every day...man rides steer!

The most humorous thing we saw was the entry signs forbidding knives, guns, lighters, or FISHING POLES.  The guard confirmed that indeed, since Day 1, people have been trying to get in with fishing poles, evidently thinking they could catch fish, and have them cooked to order.

The huge viewing tank with two whale sharks, hammerheads, sawfish, guitarfish, stingrays, Port Jackson sharks, and countless other species of marine life was a real treat.  Here are the whale sharks and hammerheads:

and a hammerhead with a whale shark in the background:

and looking like a kite flying contest:

And one flying solo:

and the groupers that were often flanked with the yellow fish:

 and of the Japanese spider crab tank:

Then we found out about an International Gem show in Chantilly VA starting the next day (Friday), so we spent the day there and found a knock-dead Boulder opal-gold-diamond ring for Heidi:

Saturday we visited with third-generation customers Frank & Kathy and their two boys Josh & Noah, and learned more of the Civil War landmarks in the area.  It happened to be George Washington's birthday weekend, so there were fireworks at the Ferry Farm Home we happened to see while at a restaurant.  Make your own fireworks here! 

  Fireworks

and near Chocowinity is another pile we visited again, though the best tooth was found right next to the car!

A nice ending to an eventful four days.

     

You can see the cedar trunk root on the top of our van here

We marveled at the human body and at the technology that made this display possible.  The bodies were preserved through "polymer preservation".  Tissue water is removed by submersing in acetone.  The acetone is then removed in a vacuum chamber.  At this time the tissue spaces formerly filled with acetone are filled instead with liquid silicone rubber.  Lastly - curing - the silicone rubber is treated with a catalyst and hardened.  There is now no chance of deterioration due to natural decay.

https://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/

A gator hide with head, drying on their garage wall

A horn knife with gator skute end

A barracuda head, the perfect home decor (?)

This is our 2nd visit to Metropolis.  There's a great memorabilia store, cut-outs where Glenn did a little cross-gender playing, and there's a great big statue in the center plaza

Let's not forget Big John at the grocery store, a great attraction in itself:

One formation even resembled a woolly mammoth!

Crystalline pottery is the art of growing crystals in the firing process.  They use 25% zinc, add ground natural quartz to make it a glass, and a third mineral for color such as nickel, copper or cobalt.  Mixed with water, glazed, fired at 2300 degrees, the glaze melts down the sides of the vase.  Zinc crystallizes at 1850 to 2150 degrees as it cools, the same way crystals grow from molten rock as it cools, so the kiln is set at 2000 degrees for 6 to 15 hours (a LONG time compared to other pottery glazes) during which time they peek in to see the crystals grow and spread over the surface of the pottery.  What fun, you never quite know how they will end up!

View some of their other exquisite work here in their store:

and on a website showcasing their work:

americanpotters.com

They also shared with us a specimen of "propolite" also known as "cotton stone" because of similar crystals that grow within the rock.  We still need to research this further, as there is very little on the internet we have found.  This mineral is found only in a few places in the U.S. - and this county in Seagrove is one of them!  Here's a photo of a specimen:

Here is William with a new face pot we like, we'll have to see when it's finished:

Speaking of face pottery, we have been thinking of collecting it for some time .. evidently that time has COME - because here's a link to the new collection! Face Pottery

We continued on to Virginia where we made a Virtual Tour of the Fairy Stone State Park, hunting for fairy stones thanks to our friends Dale and Renee and digger Pete:

Fairy Stone Crosses

Heidi found the fencing and sluice photo-worthy:

And the picturesque Philpott Dam on the way back:

So we found Berglund Used Cars and spoke with Darrenn Clark, who gave us 2 souvenirs (we added the "Trunk Monkey" necklace):

Darrenn directed us to the dealership in Salem, where we got the rest of the story...this dealership bought the East Coast rights to use this ad campaign.  They put Trunk Monkey decals on a new Ford Mustang car, filled the trunk with these stuffed monkeys, and made a contest of guessing how many were in the trunk.

Skip Larrington of Roanoke, Virginia, a chemistry and computer science teacher at Hidden Valley High School, mathematically calculated the capacity of the trunk at 403 - there were 404 in the trunk.  So he WON the car on September 2nd!  CONGRATULATIONS!

He kept the decals on the car to teach kids that applied math does pay!! and drives it to school every day.  He kept 40 of the trunk monkeys - one is always in the car with him, of course.

Here's his story:

Back in early June, there was a "teacher appreciation night" at a Salem Avalanche game. Teachers received free tickets to the game. We enjoy going to a couple of games a year at the park, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to go. The weather was very comfortable, so we were looking forward to a very pleasant game.

Our two daughters listen to the 94.9 Star Country radio station, along with one other station exclusively, so we were well aware of the Trunk Monkey promotion that was going on. It just so happened that the car was going to be at the game so this was our opportunity to enter the contest. Of course, we never imagined that we would win the Mustang, but it was a fun thing to participate in anyhow.

My training is in software engineering, a fancy term for computer programming. I left the computer field a few years ago and am now a teacher of Computer Science and Chemistry at Hidden Valley High School. As a teacher, and as a software engineer, I decided to put my skills to use.  I got on the internet and determined the cubic footage of the trunk; however, I had no idea how large a trunk monkey was, so I was no closer to an answer than I was before.

We arrived at the game a little late and the 94.9 crew was packing up, but they still had a Trunk Monkey on display. Based on that one Trunk Monkey, I was able to estimate how many one could pack into a cubic foot. I then multiplied that number by the number of cubic feet in the trunk.

Now came some "seat of the pants" estimation. They would not let you look in the trunk to see how full it was, or how tightly they had stuffed the monkeys in. I surmised that the trunk might not be stuffed full since when you opened the trunk, many Trunk Monkeys would fall out. I also surmised that the monkeys had been thrown in randomly instead of placed in to maximize density. For this reason, I removed 20% from my calculated number. I wrote down that number, and went in to enjoy the game, never expecting to hear another word about my guess. My wife, whose guess was about 150, told me that I was crazy to have guessed such a large number. "Oh well", I responded, "It is turned in now." I think we might have been the last people to enter the contest that evening.

Fast forward more than two months to late August. School was again in session, and we received a phone call from 94.9 Star Country inviting us to attend another game on September 2nd. At that game, the top 94 finalists would be invited onto the field to learn who the lucky winner was of the car. Wow, it was down to 94 people, and I was one of the last 94. This would make a great story for my students at school, just making it to the last 94 people out of all the thousands of entries they must have had for the car. Using math really does pay off.

We paraded onto the field, and waved at the crowd. Brett Sharp of 94.9  Star Country explained that we were to be eliminated in groups, and the last person remaining would be the winner. The first two groups eliminated were groups 20-29 and 40-49 . the two groups closest to me. They proceeded to eliminate groups until there were only 4 of us left. Two of them were eliminated, leaving just two of us standing. The rest of the world no longer existed. Time stood still. The crowds were gone, the players were
gone. There were only three people in my world at that moment . the other contestant, Brett Sharp, and myself. After shaking hands with the other contestant, the time was upon us. The other contestant was eliminated, and
the car was mine!

We picked the car up on Tuesday evening, and I drove it to school on Wednesday morning. The car was parked in front of the school all day (starting at 7:00 AM). The car was the talk of the student body all day. An announcement was made in the morning about the car, stating that a teacher had won the car and encouraging students to ask their math teachers about how the car was won. All the math teachers had a Trunk Monkey in their possession, along with a description of the mathematical process followed to come up with the winning number.

Each day the car is driven to Hidden Valley High School and parked in the teacher lot. The stickers remain on the vehicle, and hopefully will remain there for a couple of months to remind the students of what math can possibly do for them. (We do not know how long the glue will hold them on.)

The following is a link to Star Country, where there are a couple of pictures of the actual give away at the game.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Trunk Monkey, and sorely in need of a belly laugh or two, we suggest you check out the official website.  Click on the KATU Report on the making of the videos, and the Windows Hi Res versions of "Thrown off the bridge", "Want a Donut", and "Throwing Eggs 1 or 2":

trunkmonkey.com

The smell of apple butter permeated the fairgrounds from a bubbling cauldron of apples,  the sound of Bluegrass music filled the air here in Chilhowie, near the western tip of Virginia, close to the Tennessee & Kentucky border, the furthermost stop for this trip.

Of course we walked away with Virginia apples and apple butter enough to last us awhile.

Hungry Mother State Park?  Watch out, kids!