State Parks Scavenger Hunt-Eastern Parks

Saturday was our last state parks excursion and we hit the last 5 parks.  We started off the morning at Flight Park at the Point of the Mountain.  I have seen hang gliders and para gliders at this mountain for years but had no idea it was a state park.  There were a whole bunch of them Saturday morning so it was really neat to watch them all.  Leila was intrigued by them and then wanted me to "fly" with her.

Next up we made a bit of a detour and made our way back to Rockport.  We were at this park during our very first excursion but didn't actually complete any of the tasks for the scavenger hunt.  At the time, we weren't sure how involved we were going to get in the competition.  But as we came up on the end of the competition, we stood a very good chance of hitting every state park and winning so we wanted to make sure we got some sort of credit for Rockport.

Burn area from the Rockport 12 fire just a couple weeks earlier

The stupid bench that took us FOREVER to find

After we finally managed to scrape up a point, we made our way to Dinosaur National Monument where we met up with Ashley, Taylor, Jori, and Annie at the quarry.  When we got off the tram and started walking towards the building, Leila spotted the rest of our group on the upper landing.  She got so excited and wanted to run straight up to them, not realizing she would have to turn and go up the ramp to do so.  Once we were inside, she enjoyed running all around and was actually pretty interested in the "o-saurs" (Leila speak for dinosaur).  She would make a roaring sound and say "o-saur, o-saur!" that made the park ranger laugh.

After the quarry, we made our way back to Vernal to hit the Utah Field House of Natural History.  We were running late due to our detour to Rockport (and other issues getting going in the morning) so it was nearly 5 when we made it to the museum.  I had looked up the hours online and thought that we had until 7 since it was still before Labor Day.  No such luck.  When we walked in, we were informed that we only had 15 minutes until closing!  So we took the speed tour through the museum only stopping long enough to complete our scavenger hunt tasks.  That was a shame too because it was a really nice museum.

Next up was Red Fleet.  Our group split up here for a bit so that Taylor could do some fishing while we tracked down some dinosaur tracks.  The tracks turned out to be on the other side of the reservoir and at the end of a nearly 1.5 mile hike (one-way).  Leila hadn't slept much in the car and had pretty much had it by this point so I took off to get a picture of the dino tracks myself while they waited in the car.  Once I got to the tracks, I could spot the rest of my group fishing on the other side.  Made me wish I'd had a canoe to just row over!

Hello down there!

Can you spot the dino track?

Once I made it back to the car (in a breathless, red-faced manner since I'd run most of the way), we made plans to eat dinner in Roosevelt.  Along the way, our car stopped at Steinaker just long enough to get a picture of Leila in her most important piece of boating safety equipment.

We met up at the Frontier Grill for dinner because that was the only place worth stopping at according to the local gas station attendant.  It wasn't worth stopping for.  But it got us fed and on the road home about 9.  We still had one more park to hit along the way home.  Thankfully, the only task for this park didn't require any pictures, just information.  We stopped just long enough to say that we'd been to the park before continuing on our way.

After a very, very full day we made it home.  On Tuesday, they announced the winner of the scavenger hunt.  It wasn't us.  But I was confused because I knew we had more points than the family they had announced as the winner.  They dug into it and found their mistake but still said the other family won.  I did my own calculations and think we really did win by one whole point.  But, they ended up offering the grand prize to the top 3 teams because of their faulty scoring.  So, here it is, our prize pack for driving 3457 miles in 66 hours and 43 minutes of driving over 11 days to visit 41 Utah State Parks and complete 61 scavenger hunt tasks.  Phew!