December 20 , 2016:

byRachel Walker

It was about an hour into our dig under the blazing Wyoming sun that my 6-year-old, Henry, cried out, “I found one!”

The geologist working alongside him, Angela Reddick, cocked her head, raised her eyebrows and stepped off her small pad to inch in for a closer look. I was skeptical. Already, 4-year-old Silas and I, working nearby, had found scores of “bones,” only to hear the disappointing verdict that they were rocks.

We were digging in the midst of the Morrison Formation, a sedimentary rock sequence that’s among the most fertile sources of dinosaur fossils in North America. As we chipped away at the soft rock and earthen surface with dull oyster knives and trowels, sweat dripped down our necks. Beyond our mesh shade structure, the landscape rolled off into the distance, a sea of sage and red-dirt hills.

You would think that the odds were against us, an inexperienced trio with only one truly focused and committed member (Henry). But Reddick was examining his discovery with diligence. She ran her hand over the sleek, black material that Henry had partially unearthed and squinted. The three of us watched, breathless.

“Congratulations, Henry,” she said. “You found yourself a dinosaur bone.”

Sweeter words have never been spoken to a first-grader. Henry beamed as she created a small, white label to mark the bone, which she said was massive. There was no way we would dig it out in its entirety, she told us. Rather, we’d leave it for other teams to slowly liberate and then, when it was ready, professionals would wrap it in a plaster cast and transport it to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center’s laboratory, where it would be cleaned and catalogued.

Henry’s satisfaction was contagious, and we all were jolted with newfound energy. Silas exuberantly congratulated his big brother and then, in his excitement, tried to lift the bucket into which we had been tossing big rocks we pulled from the dig site.

[Texas’ best-kept secret? A 120-mile-long canyon that’s grand in its own right.]

Reddick immediately switched from lecturing scientist to astute guide and protector — a transformation she did effortlessly and frequently on the day we spent together — and relieved him of the heavy load. She dumped it away from the quarry and then returned to deliver high-fives all around. It was enough encouragement to keep us baking in the midmorning June heat of Central Wyoming for another hour.

Last spring, a friend from Fairbanks, Alaska, flew her family of five to Utah, rented an R.V. and set out on a western dinosaur tour that included Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and the Dakotas. Until she sent me an enthusiastic email raving about their stop in Thermopolis, I couldn’t have found the Wyoming town on a map. But it is home to the Wyoming Dinosaur Center, where kids and adults alike can join in authentic excavations and then get firsthand experience in a high-tech lab before touring the center’s impressive museum. There they’ll see “Jimbo,” a supersaurus, one of the largest dinosaurs ever mounted, and “Stan,” a 35-foot Tyrannosaurus rex, charging a triceratops. The museum has more than 30 mounted skeletons and hundreds of displays and dioramas.

“You’re in the quarry, with the tools, hacking away at the rock,” my friend wrote. “It’s worth every penny. I would do it again in a heartbeat.” She ended her missive with a warning to make sure that the kids knew we wouldn’t be digging for a T. rex; the bones buried near Thermopolis come from sauropods.

What sounded even better was the chance to encounter the bones in the real world, far from the natural history museums where we could look at but not touch those compelling skeletons. But the Dig for a Day price was steep — $150 for me and $100 for each of the boys — and I wanted to make sure this would be a worthwhile endeavor before shelling out $350 for a one-day activity. I needn’t have worried. When I asked if they wanted to drive for eight hours into Wyoming to dig for dinosaur bones, the answer came quickly and unanimous: Absolutely!

Naturally. Ever since they could express opinions, Henry and Silas have clamored for books about dinosaurs. They’ve corrected me when I’ve mistaken arthropods for sauropods (rookie mistake). They wear dinosaur-decorated clothes, and their flip-flops leave archaeopteryx tracks in their wake. One sleeps with a stuffed triceratops, the other with a plush T. rex.

Two weeks later, we downloaded Disney’s “The Good Dinosaur” (the scientists at the Wyoming Dinosaur Center were consultants on the 2015 animated film, which takes place in what is modern-day Wyoming) onto the iPad and hit the road.

Today, the center constitutes a 16,000-square-foot facility that includes a museum, fossil-prep lab and approximately 130 dig sites (roughly 20 are active). Construction on a new museum is slated to begin in April 2017.

There are several ways to visit the center, and the Dig for a Day program, which runs mid-May through mid-September, is the most comprehensive (and most expensive). Other summer programs include a museum visit ($10), a dig-site tour ($12.50) or a combination of those two. During the winter season (mid-September through mid-May), the museum and lab are open, but the dig sites are closed.

Since the center’s inception, workers have removed more than 10,000 bones from the excavation sites. Reddick confirmed my friend’s information: Most fossils are from long-necked sauropods, which include the camarasaurus, diplodocus, camptosaurus and apatosaurus. The quarries sit atop a bone bed where an ancient stream washed bones together in a river channel and buried them in silt.

By late morning, even Henry had tired of the dirt so we headed back and ate our center-provided sack lunches in the museum’s massive, air-conditioned storage area, where industrial shelving held dozens of excavated bones awaiting cleaning and classification. Then we headed into the laboratory, where Reddick sat us down at a cluttered table, put practice bones in front of us and provided us with toothbrushes, small hooks and containers of water to chip away sediment and clean the bones.

If excavating outside had the potential for tedium, this activity held an even greater risk, as it demanded similar focus and concentration — hard to summon after the morning’s adventure. Our eyes were collectively glazing over. Reddick must have sensed our fading. Why else would she have brought out the drill?

[This isn’t Darwin’s Galapagos: The wildlife-rich islands are more tourist-friendly than you think ]

Turns out that a more efficient method for removing plaster, sediment and grime from dinosaur bones is to use power tools. As Reddick handed the drill to my 4-year-old and pointed to where on the ancient fossil he should concentrate, I interrupted, fearful that he might, you know, make a mistake. She assured me that they set aside less-than-perfect bones for this exact scenario and then let him loose. He was thrilled, pressing the drill all over the bone and watching material flake away. There are few things in life more powerful for a preschooler than mechanized tools. (Silas also loves our vacuum). To be immersed in the lab with the freedom to work on his bone for as long as he liked was pure bliss for him.

Eventually we wrapped up our lab component and followed Reddick through the museum for a personal tour. The highlight was the center’s most valuable display: a fossilized archaeopteryx from some 150 million years ago, one of 10 in the world (the others are all in Europe). A birdlike creature that had teeth, a tail and wings, the archaeopteryx is roughly the size of a crow. Pohl, the center’s founder, brokered the private sale of the fossil in 2006 and today it sits, on loan, under bulletproof glass with an elaborate security system.

I had no idea that one of the world’s most valuable fossils was under lock and key in the middle of Wyoming, and I was transfixed. It was beautiful in a lacy, intricate way, and I peppered Reddick with questions as I read all the interpretive information posted next to the display.

That’s when the boys wilted. It had been a long day, and they were exhausted. So I sent them to the multimedia section of the museum, where a video was playing on a large screen, and continued to cram my brain full of dinosaur information I hadn’t even known I craved.

Afterward, I collected the kids, somewhat amazed at the unique adventure we had just completed. I recalled the email from my Alaskan friend and made a mental note to thank her for tipping me off to the center’s existence. A week later, home and rested, I typed a message and hit send. Then I reread her original email and realized that I had essentially parroted her enthusiasm back to her.

“Wow!” I wrote. “Never done anything like that before. Worth every penny. I’d definitely go back.”