Day Trip From Dallas: Give Me a Home, Where the Dinosaurs Roamed

While my typical New Year's Day is spent watching movies on TBS and nursing a hellacious hangover, this year I decided to bring in 2010 with an adventure (and that's partially because I didn't have a hangover). Dan and I settled on a road trip to a place that would thrill most six-year-olds (and minimally excite most 26-year-olds)—Dinosaur Valley State Park, home to some of the most well-preserved dinosaur tracks in the world. At the first site within the park, we hiked right down to the bed of the Paluxy River, where, right next to three idle fishermen, were two bonafide dino footprints. For real! If the water were a little warmer in that bright blue swimming hole, we would've gotten right in to stick our feet inside the three-toed tracks. At the next site, we hopped rocks to cross the river and arrive at the older-than-ancient evidence of a dinosaur chase. Archeologists have concluded that here, some 113 million years ago, a meat-eating carnosaur ran after an unassuming sauropod (which looks like a brontosaurus). I have concluded that the outcome probably wasn't pretty (and that I'm beginning to sound like a dorky eight-year-old). The nearly-two-hour road trip led us past the kind of wide open spaces that reminded us of our trip home from San Antonio. Ahhh, the open road.