Day 2

Legacy Inn and RV Park Price, Utah

Today was a day for exploring.  Our first stop was downtown Price.  We walked around the Coal Miners Memorial.  Coal mining was and is a dangerous business.  Many men were lost in a series of incidents over the years.    In 1924 many men were killed in the Rains Explosion and then that same year other lives were lost in the Castle Gate Explosion.  There was another explosion at Standardville in 1930, rescuers were also lost during a recovery operation. The Peerless Explosion occurred that same year.  In 1945 there was the Sunnyside Utah Fuel Explosion and the Kennilworth Explosion.  There was an explosion at Spring Canyon in 1958.  In 2000 there was the Willow Creek Explosion and the Winter Quarters Explosion.  There were lots of other smaller accidents as well.  The names of all of the men who were killed in the coal mining business in Carbon County were listed.

Price is Right for…

The Veteran’s Memorial.

The Prehistoric Museum of Utah State University  is an impressive place. 

We visited the Hall of Paleontology first. 

The Utahraptor.

This display was interesting.  It is meant to show us the relativity of time from a geological, paleontological perspective.  “Geology gave us the immensity of time and taught us how little of it our species has occupied.”  -Stephen Gould

Most of the fossils in the museum were collected near the museum.  This is a trilobite.

Nearby there is the Jurassic National Monument.  There you can actually see the dinosaur bones imbedded in the earth.  I had hoped to go there but they are currently only open on weekends.  There is the largest concentration of Allsaurus bones in this quarry than anywhere else.  There are other species as well.  Scientists have lots of hypotheses but are really not sure why so many dinosaur bones exist in this area.  The exhibit shows a plot picture of where the more than 12,000 bones were found. 

A stegosaurus.

Allosuarus.

Duckbill dinosaur.

Lots of dinosaur tracks have been found in coal mines.

View from the balcony.

The second portion of the museum is the Hall of Archeology.  Here the history of man and prehistoric animals is depicted.

Many artifacts have been gathered from ancient Native American sites.

Construction tools.

And how did it all fall apart…what caused the extinction of the mammoths and the saber tooths…

I very much enjoyed the museum.  It was yet another reminder that we are so very small and here for such a very short time.

We drove to the town of Helper about 5 miles north. 

We found a small café called the Balanced Rock Pub and Eatery for our brunch.  The omelets were delicious!

Helper was also a mining town.  We visited the outdoor portion of the coal mining museum to see the equipment that was used.

The Balanced Rock of Helper.

I spent a large portion of my afternoon doing laundry and cleaning the RV. 

It has been so very dusty…it was nice to really scrub things while we were at a full-service RV park.  Tomorrow, we will take the Jeep for service.