Moab, UT Sep 27, 1998						Forecast
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Moab is very close to home, and is was one of the most fun stops. We needed a pool to cool of in after the hike in Rabbit Valley, and at night dad discovered a toad that we played with for a while.

We went on two hikes in Moab. The Mill Canyon Dinosaur Trail was a lot like the Rabbit Valley Trail Through Time in Colorado, except the trail was much shorter, there were more fossils and they were easier to identify. There were many places, though, where vandals had removed the fossils, so all that was left was the shape in the surrounding rock. That's really too bad that people would take away from the public like that. It was fun, though.

The Mill Canyon trail is not marked from the main road. Just a few hundred feet north from mile market 141 on HWY 191 out of Moab is the trail, on the west side of the road. It is a two mile bladed road to the trail, with a couple of forks. (Take the first left, then a right.) Or, check with the visitors center before-hand for a map and guide.

Do you know where to look for a Dinosaur? (See below for additional resources you can buy online)

• Mill Canyon/Copper Ridge
• The Dinosaurs - Superb PBS Video Series

As always, we encounter modern life everywhere we go on our Natural History Tour. We found some tracks of what we think might be of a little pack-rat. If this were to remain untouched for a million years, there might be some cute little fossils here.

We saw the little pack-rats running all over the place, but they were much to fast to get a picture of them. We did come across a pack-rat nest, though, and learned that these little guys are pretty important. They gather things from their surroundings and carry them back to their nests. Generation after generation live in the same place, sometimes for hundreds or even thousands of years, piling up stuff. Scientists can learn a lot about the history of the area around a pack-rat nest by studying the layers of the nest.

This was a very interesting wingless bee. It ran around on the sand, looking for food and staying out of the sun.

The fossil remains here were easy to identify, with a little help from the guide pamphlet. Can you tell what this first item is? (hint: alupacs)

The second picture is a cross section of a humorous of an allosaurus. You can see where the soft marrow was in the middle. Since the marrow is soft, it wasn't preserved.

Copper Ridge Dinosaur Trackway

The most fun was the second hike to some dinosaur tracks. This was a small site with some therapod and sauropod tracks, discovered in 1989 near the Moab airport. We had brought some materials to make a cast, and thought this would finally be the chance to try.

It wasn't easy! There was a lot of work to do, and we had to be careful not to damage the site. The prints at Clayton Lake, NM were made in sandy mud, so they became shale and are very fragile. The tracks in Moab were made in dense mud, so the prints are in solid rock and a lot better defined. We thought we could make a cast without damaging the site.

For more:

• On the Tracks of Dinosaurs - Book Review
• Mill Canyon/Copper Ridge

Preparing the site

When we arrived at the site, we noticed that someone else had tried to make a cast. They had used plaster, and there was a mess left all around. There was some hardened plaster in the track, and there was some plaster discarded in the rocks around. It was really sad to see this. We had to clean up the track and prepare it for our cast, including carefully chipping out some of the plaster.

Dad is mixing the alginate.

We knew not to use plaster directly in the track. We brought some alginate that Grandpa provided. Alginate is the stuff that dentists and orthodontists use to make a mold of teeth. It is made from kelp. It is very soft, and when it dries out it turns into a powder again. Alginate would not hurt the track at all, and would not leave a trace after we left.

The alginate is too lumpy!

The alginate got too lumpy, and didn't mix well. Maybe the water was too warm? Maybe I was trying to mix too much at once? I had to use my hands to try to mix it up, but it didn't look good.

Filled track

We thought we'd try it anyway, so I poured the alginate into the track. We knew it would be a mess, so Susan and Harrison went back to the LV to get some more water.

Cleaning up the site.

The alginate is supposed to set-up in just a few minutes. After 20 minutes, it was still wet and lumpy. We had to dig it all out, and clean up the site. We were determined to leave it cleaner than how we found it, so it took a lot of work.

Cleaned track

Here is a picture of the cleaned up track. It looks pretty good, and definitely better that when we got there. But still, we were thinking about the how it looked before, and how easy it is for someone to ruin a treasure like this. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to make a cast?

But we did learn a secret for taking great pictures of tracks. WATER! After the cleanup, the track looked really good. I took my water bottle and "painted" the remaining tracks with some water. They jumped out of the rock and were very easy to see. The result is the picture at the top of this section, with easily visible tracks. With this trick, we learned how another way to keep the wise phrase, "Take only pictures, leave only footprints."

Travel Tips

Resources
Try out some of these recommendations for your own learning activities.
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Disney's Bill Nye the Science Guy: Dinosaurs
by Disney Home Video

Everybody loves Bill Nye, the coolest kid-friendly scientist around. This is a fun-filled dinosaur video.

Where to Look for a Dinosaur
by Bernard Most.
We read this book one section at a time. Then we looked at our globe and found out where different kind of dinosaurs have been found. We learned that dinosaur are basically found anywhere. Iguanidon skeletons are found all over the world.