Curiosity is the key to having fun. Seriously. What’s a vacation without an itch to scratch?
My son pronounced one day that he wanted to go to the Gobi Desert (in Mongolia) and dig dinosaur bones. He was watching the documentary Dinosaurs Alive!, when he saw graduate students with the American University join an excavation team, and he wanted in. We naively said yes. Meaning, “someday.” When he asked about it a day later, and kept asking, insisting on when, we needed to make good on that promise. Thank goodness for Ghost Ranch, New Mexico and its Paleontology Tour.
We chose to build our entire two-week vacation (loaded with site seeing and family visits) around one ten o’clock tour, given five Thursdays a year. We got to squat in the dirt with paleontologists, experts who were willing to share, to answer questions, to push our knowledge, to examine the landscape’s natural history together, and to be there, fully and cheerfully, with us. There were five of us on the tour. We got the red carpet experience.
Do my kids realize how spectacular it was to do this? That kind of primary access to a subject and to experts? Will they grow to assume that if you have a question, or even half of a question, you can search, you can let yourself dream, you can surround yourself with people and resources that empower your journey, and that your development along the way gives life meaning? I hope so.
Here are the nuts and bolts of this trip:
We combined natural history with art, studying dinosaurs and geology–and Georgia O’Keeffe, an American painter.
Pre-trip we made simple journals with research and room for notes. We put in maps of our trip, timelines of dinosaurs, and especially information about coelophysis, one of the most famous dinosaurs found at Ghost Ranch. We studied paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe–both online and in print.
We began our road trip at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles, California.
We spent a day in Santa Fe, and visited the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Audio wands are available. The day we went there weren’t any hands-on activities for kids, so I recommend combining this museum with something else, whether it’s lunch or another activity.
There’s oodles of options, from a simple walk through the plaza, to hours in the highly immersive Meow Wolf. On the plaza there’s Senior Murphy Candymaker, and close by is The Harrell House Bug Museum. We’ve also enjoyed a wind sculpture garden, the Wilford Gallery, on Canyon Road, a trip to the Santa Fe Children’s Museum, or the Museum of International Folk Art on Museum Hill.
We spent a night at Ghost Ranch. The accommodations were simple, but clean. We ignored the concrete floors, because we could sit outside and sip wine. Breakfast was early, but delicious. This is exactly the way I like to “camp out”–in a hotel room with meals included.
In addition to the paleontology tour, we booked a horseback riding tour, which wound through spectacular mesas and around Georgia O’Keeffe’s ranch house.
Wow–looking at the photo above and the photo below–I’d forgotten–the weather changes so quickly there.
We had a delicious dinner at Cafe Abiquiu at the Abiquiu Inn. Local beer. Local wine. Fresh ingredients.
The day before our tour, we met Alex Downs at the Museum of Paleontology at Ghost Ranch. Alex is the resident paleontologist at Ghost Ranch. He kindly took us behind the scenes for an amazing tour of vaults and soon-to-be-published new finds (the Vancleavia skeleton had just been photographed by National Geographic). If you’re as nutty about dinosaurs as we were on that trip, it’s probably best to connect with Alex in advance. We got really lucky–Alex happened to be there, and he was very generous.
On the paleontology tour, we met celebrity Alan Turner, who was in Dinosaurs Alive! as a student, and who now leads digs at Ghost Ranch. On site, he warmly engaged us all about bones. We were star struck.
Ghost Ranch has got my goat. I want to go back. There’s canoeing, painting, writing, anthropolgy, yoga, chaco culture–so many ways to connect at Ghost Ranch. On my radar: a week-long archaeology family workshop, or an excursion into chaco on my own.
The Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits (in Los Angeles) is also on our bucket list. And so is Mongolia–still keeping that in mind.
Here’s a great starting place to find a dino site near you: NPS National Fossil Day.
Any more dinosaur experiences you can recommend?
Where does curiosity lead you on vacation?
*****
Update: We did enjoy the Page Museum. Great place! I’ve included that in the Best Family Fun on Hwy 101 post.
Also, I put photos from this tour as a slideshow on our TV during a dino-themed birthday party. It pops up so much, it’s turned one family trip into family lore. Learn how to set up your Flickr screen saver.
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