We wanted to see some nice fall colors, so we headed down to Kelly Point Park where the Willamette River meets the Columbia River. There weren’t many fall colors, but the sunset was pretty, and the ships were large and impressive.
Here is Ruth and Magnus hanging out on a log.
And then there were the very large mushrooms we found:
Not for eating.
Here is some more on our trip:
So, one of the reasons for the timing of our trip was to go to an exhibit re-opening in Dinosaur National Monument. They have a wall of bones from many different dinosaurs on display. 5 years ago the building was deemed too dangerous to be open to the public and since then they have been refurbishing the building and fixing the many issues (more on this in the next post).
The first day in Dinosaur we went to the Colorado half of the park, just outside Dinosaur, Co…where they even have a Dinosaur speed limit of 25 mph.
The Harper’s Corner drive is a very pretty one that was newly paved.
We hiked out to Harper’s Corner where the Yampa and Green rivers meet. The view was great and the rocks were very interesting.
Magnus made sure to dress accordingly. Here are some ancient sea life fossils in the rock.
After our hike we headed back to the highway and on to Utah again. We stayed the night in Vernal and visited the temple there. It was a good day.
On our way out of Colorado we decided to drive through Rocky Mountain National Park. It was pretty busy with visitors from Estes Park’s Elk festival.
We drove along Trail Ridge Road that takes you above the timberline and over 12,000 ft.
Dana did a short hike at Rock Cut, a ridge with some odd rock formations. 
Here Magnus contemplates existence:
We got a chance to stop at the Continental Divide and Magnus enjoyed the view.
We passed the Colorado River; it was certainly not the canyon-carving behemoth that it becomes later on.
We enjoyed the wildlife and fall colors. Hooray!
We made it to Colorado! We stayed with my sister in Colorado Springs (Thanks, Emily!) and had good times letting the cousins visit. (Emily’s post).
The first day we went to Garden of the Gods. It was deceptively hot and we were warm as we walked around the pretty rocks.
I thought this one looked like a gargoyle:
The next day we went up to Denver to visit the US Mint. We didn’t take a tour because you have to have a reservation to go, but we saw the austere exterior and went in the gift shop.
We also stopped at the Capitol in Denver. We walked up the 99 steps into the tower and took a picture on the mile-high step. Apparently there has been some second guessing about which step is actually the mile-high one.
On the way home we stopped at the Denver temple. It was closed for renovations, but the outside was very pretty.
The next day we went to Florissant Fossil beds, west of Colorado Springs. They have lots of fossilized insect specimens, so this was a must see for Dana. Their other famous thing is their petrified redwood tree stumps: not exactly visually amazing, but kind of cool. (Emily’s post).
Here we all are at Big Stump:
Outside of the park we found a lady who lets people hunt for fossils on her land (for a small fee). Dana and Emily had a good time opening the rock layers looking for fossils and Matthew and Anna had fun bringing them rocks, at least for a little while. We found lots of neat things in the rock. (Emily’s post). The rock wall is where the fossils are.
The last stop was at the May Insect Museum. There were lots of pretty (and weird) bugs, all very well preserved. Included in the ticket price was the Space Museum. It was less cool than the insects. (Emily’s post).
Here is the entrance to the Space Museum: 
