Camping at Dinosaur Valley

Early August was surprisingly mild for Texas. After months stuck indoors and having been unable to get out of Bangkok, I was anxious for the chance to get outside. 

The unseasonably comfortable temperatures brought my fiancée and I to Glen Rose, a small town a little over an hour outside of the DFW area to camp at one of my favorite state parks in Texas: Dinosaur Valley.

We got to the park, set up camp, made a delicious lunch (all our camp cooking will get its own post in the near future!), and set off to explore the park.

Dinosaur Valley is best known for the world-famous fossilized dinosaur tracks that cover the bed of the Paluxy River (a tributary of the mighty Brazos), but the park has more than just dinos! It also offers some amazing facilities, wonderful hiking trails, and stunning Texas scenery.

...but mostly, it's famous for the dinos!

Sinclair Oil Corporation has used a dinosaur as its logo since the 1930s (my Mom and I got to see the famous Sinclair Dino on its way to the Macy's Parade when we visited Arizona in 2019!), and the company build nine life-sized dinosaur statues for the 1964 World's Fair in New York City. After the World's Fair, two of these magnificent statues - the Tyrannosaurus Rex and the Bron­to­saurus - were moved to Dinosaur Valley, where they stand just outside the camp store.

We were excited to see the footprints, and in the afternoon, we took a walk down to the "Ballroom", one of the most magnificent and best-preserved dinosaur tracks in the world!

The Paluxy River was fairly shallow, and it was easy to find the tracks! Sometimes the river runs completely dry during the summer, leaving only small pools inside the footprints themselves. It's been a pretty wet and rainy year, though, but the river was shallow enough to wade in.

About 113 million years ago (give or take a few million), the area where Dinosaur Valley State Park is now located was on the shores of a great ocean. Some strange geographical phenomenon somehow preserved several sets of prehistoric footprint, which were uncovered after a large flood in 1908.

Specifically, the tracks have been identified as having belonged to Acrocanthosaurus, a smaller relative of the T-Rex, and the herbivorous Sauroposeidon proteles.

We enjoyed wading in the freezing cold water! Other visitors were swimming, splashing, and playing in the deeper "blue hole" area of the creek.

It was a beautiful, sunny day, and after visiting the tracks, we spent some time hiking and exploring near the river.

The Ballroom is the best-preserved track site, but it's far from the only one out at Dinosaur Valley. Some of the other well-preserved sites have already been cut out and moved. One now sits in the Smithsonian, one belongs to the Museum of Natural History in New York City, and one is part of the collection at the University of Texas.

It was fun exploring the river and trying to find the dinosaur tracks, but we also spent a lot of time just admiring the beautiful scenery. We've spent so much time indoors over the past year and a half that we were both so happy to finally get outside. 

Even the city parks and national parks in Thailand have been closed for most of 2021 due to the COVID-19 crisis, so we've hardly had the chance to get outdoors, much less out of the neighborhood. This visit to the US was really good for us, and gave us a break from the lockdowns and restrictions which are still ongoing in Thailand.

We joined a guided ranger program in the evening. We met up with the ranger and a small group of campers just before sunset. The ranger led us in a loop around a prairie area, stopping here and there to teach us all about the different bat species that live out in this part of Texas.

Dinosaur Valley is home to three different species of bats, all of which face threats to their environments. Bats play a crucial role in the preservation of the food chain. While many people see them as threats or as pests, it's important to realize how helpful bats really are!

Finally, tired after a busy day of hiking and adventuring, we returned to our campsite for a campfire (despite the fact that it was summer in Texas, I'm of the opinion that it's never too hot to enjoy a campfire). We had discovered a pack of "campfire colors" at the park store, which we threw onto the flames for an amazing and magical show of color. What a fun way to end the day!

When we had checked in the day before, the rangers recommended that we check out the Limestone Ledge hiking trail. After breakfast, we filled up our CamelBaks and hit the trail!

Limestone Ledge is a moderate 2-mile trail that rises into the limestone hills above the state park. It offers some of the best views in the park, and is one of the more popular hiking trails.

We were up early, and the morning was still cool. Shortly, the path stopped at a shallow, but fast-moving section of the river, which we had to cross.

After crossing the river, we found where the trail picked up again, and continued on our way. The trail began rising more steeply into the hills, and very soon we were treated to some incredible views stretching all the way across Dinosaur Valley and beyond!

As we took a rest high above the park, we took out our binoculars and watched the vultures circling overhead.

(I've sort of gotten into birding in the past month or so... I'll probably write up a post about that sometime soon...)

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you might remember the run-in I had with a monkey while camping last Christmas. Well, I had a similar encounter with hungry wildlife in the form of a very friendly camp squirrel. It was obviously used to people feeding it, and had learned how to beg. It didn't get any of my food, though. Turns out, it's easier to keep squirrels out of your cooler than monkeys!