Dinosaurs, Golden, and grumpy kids

I actually have visited Dinosaur Ridge before... but realized that the kids have never gone!  Mr. Ranch rides his bike and runs this path and nearby, so he knew the lay of the land, so a couple weeks ago when Grandude visited, we thought this would be a fun day trip.

 Off we go!

 This might be when The Girl started chanting "This is boring, let's go to the museum where it is air conditioned".

 I want to live here...just saying.  I'm intrigued by who lives there, too--I counted at least 8 mailboxes in this youtube video--be warned, it made me a little dizzy!

 Dinosaur footprint #1

 Girl in footprint

 A whole bunch of dinosaur footprints!

 Red Rocks in background

 Grumpy Boy pointing to cool rock

 Grumpy Girl avoiding us

 Happier Boy, pretending to be a dinosaur

 Happier Girl posing with Dinosaur Boy.  After this we made everyone happy by driving into Golden for lunch.  We originally planned to go to into Morrison, but it looked like there was probably an event at Red Rocks, so we drove on.  We ended up having a nice little lunch at the Old Capital Grill and going for a walk through downtown.  We ended up by the river and Mr. Ranch and The Girl ventured down below to test the water temperature while The Boy, Grandude and I hung out on the bridge and people watched.  There were a lot of kayakers and tubers--fun to watch!

The Girl, happy, probably because she is wearing her birthday gift (backpack) from Grandude, The Boy, melting down because he is hot and tired.

We were slightly bummed to see that the slide from the park was closed--wouldn't that be a wet surprise? 

 By the end of the day, after being fed and watered, our grumpy children were happy and reported that the trip was a success.