Sep 19, 2011

Ulrich’s Fossil Gallery

Over Labor Day weekend, we got ditched. Joe’s sister Rachel and her family ditched us, his parents ditched us… so we had to make the best of it. And we survived. It was actually a lot of fun… Joe had 2 days off of school so we had lots of time to play! On Saturday we took a drive to Bear Lake, UT. On the way, we saw this sign that said, “Fossil Butte.” We didn’t actually make it to Fossil Butte, but we did spend about an hour at Ulrich’s Fossil Gallery.

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The Ulrich’s (I’m guessing) live in this gigantic house/fossil gallery. Up those stairs, through the door and up some more stairs to the right is the gallery. They have some fossils that are millions of years old… they were incredible! The left side of the house with that little sunroom, is where they live. We didn’t meet “Mr. Ulrich” but his wife was SO sweet. She told us all about the fossils and how they started their business… amazing.

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This dinosaur fossil is displayed right outside their home… Connor was in awe!

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The Ulrichs have some employees who take tourists up to the mines to look for their own fossils. When they come back, they unload them all, and turn on their electric saw and then cut off the edges and whatnot to make it square. The pile of rock on the left side of the picture is where they throw all of the extras. Mrs. Ulrich gave each of the kids a hammer and chisel to look for their own fossils right outside the house. I can’t believe how interested both Haylie and Connor were in this… It was like 600 degrees in the shade, and we still spent a good 45 minutes splitting rock. And the coolest part was that we got to bring all of the fossils that we found, home!

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This is the one Connor found… cool huh?!

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Poor little orphan Maggie.

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Pure…

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…silence.

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For a minute anyway. It was one heavenly minute though, let me tell you!

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(more to come on the “Bear Lake” part of the trip)

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