Clevland Lloyd

Labor day morning.

We woke up early, labored in our house, and got ready to leave on our day long adventure just as the clouds came rolling in and the rain and hail came tumbling down.

Even though our adventure would be taking us to the middle of nowhere and outside the whole time, we didn't care! We were going on an adventure! A dinosaur adventure!

When you ask Isaac what he wants to be when he grows up, his answer these days, "A Paleontologist". One night while studying about dinosaurs Kurt and the boys discovered that there is a dinosaur quarry 30 miles south of Price, UT. The Clevland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry. This was our destination.

Once you hit the gravel road that leads you to the quarry, it is about a 15 minute drive with bends, and turns. Mind you, this in in the middle of no where. Ever been to Bone, ID? Like I said, Middle of no where. It is a flat land with a few hills. It's desert floor is laden with dirt and rock everywhere.

When we made it to the quarry, I could tell that this is one of those hidden gem kind of places that only someone like Kurt could really appreciate. The place was desolate. Really a let down if you had high expectations. All that was there is a tiny museum and two buildings (the quarry buildings). There was a family that got there just after we did. And they were out of there in about 15 minutes. It took that long just to drive the road to get there! But not us Hepworth's, we made a day out of it and loved every minute of it!

The two buildings pictured below are the quarry buildings. They aren't very big. To give you a little bit of history. Clevland Lloyd, Clevland is the name of the nearby town, Lloyd is the name of the benefactor, a lawyer from Philadelphia, who funded the start of the excavating. Clevland Lloyd is the most densly populated area of dinosaur bones in the world. The bones they have found there can be found in 60 museums around the world. Looking at the picture, most of the bones were found underneath the two buildings where they are currently digging, and the area right in front of the buildings. Bones were first discovered by farmers. This land is where their cattle would graze. And they began to find bone fragments. Scientists came on the scene checked it out, and now is is government owned land.
These are some of the bones in the quarry. Some are still in the ground exposed. They have found that the majority of the bones are 3 feet down. You could tell by the terrain of the land that the wind just blows layers of dirt and rock up exposing new layers of earth. The bones are 147 million years old. There is speculation that this area may have been a watering hole for the dinosaurs.
There were some hiking trails, and we did 2 of them. Of course while hiking we were on the lookout for any dinosaur bones that may be laying around. We didn't find any real bones, and we didn't let on that the rocks the boys picked up weren't real bones. They were loving every second of it. The boys had a really great collection going, including a dinosaur tooth, parts of it's hand, and other misc. parts.

This picture was take on top of Raptor Rock. It over looks the museum and the quarry.

Once we got done with our hikes, we went back to the museum for a family picture. It was there that "Ponytail Joe" told the boys that the land was property of the government and that they weren't allowed to pick anything up. "Ponytail Joe" then took the rocks they collected for their dinosaur collection and threw them out onto the desolate land right in front of their sad little faces. Uhhhh! Seriously.......could you maybe have sugar coated it just a little bit more, and maybe not throw the rocks out right in front of them????

Luckily right before our hike, Kurt took the boys' jackets to the car because he didn't want to carry them on the hike. He didn't want to carry them because the boys had loaded their jacket pockets with "fossils" they found and the jackets were heavy. HA! Take that "Ponytail Joe."

We had a great day! The rain stopped just before we got there and the sun came out. The boys were in heaven, and Kurt and I just enjoyed being out on an adventure with our family.