Dino Park, Denkendorf, Germany

Natalie had a FUN trip to Therme Erding (in Munich) planned for today with her Girl Scout troop and the weather was really beautiful, so we decided to take advantage of the sunshine and warm weather and drive down to the little town of Denkendorf, which is just north of Ingolstadt and check out Dino Park!  Grant really wanted to go, and he had been there before on a school trip.  So we thought, why not have a fun day with our little buddy?

Since we got there around noon, we ate some lunch first (mmmm, currywurst!) and then set out to explore the dinosaurs.  Or the kraken, coming out of a snail shell!

Before you enter the land of the dinosaurs, you got to see a timeline of the world, which gave you a good sense of scale for how long the world has been around, and how very little time humans have existed.

The T-Rex of the sea (Dunkleosteus terrelli) could be 9 meters if fully grown.  Fish were the oldest animals on the earth that had bones.

The Eryops megacephalus was a type of frog or newt that lived millions of years ago in Europe and North America.

One cool thing the park had was a map of the world as it looked during the time period you were walking through.  On the map, it showed you where the location of the Dino Park was during that time period! SO cool!  At this point, 300 million years ago, the Dinosaur Park would have been much closer to the equator!

What a T-Rex would have looked like a month after its death.

Grant with the Plateosaurus Engelhardti.  This guy (not Grant) was one of the first long necked dinosaurs.  One of these was found in 1834 right here in Bavaria - in Heroldsberg, which is about 40 minutes from our house.  It was the first dinosaur found in Germany and since then, about 100 of this type of dinosaur have been found in Germany and Switzerland.

Grant, a dinosaur is about to eat you!

Here little fella.  Have some snacks.

This thing was super cool.  At one point, this guy was all over the place (like modern birds are today.)  Pterodactyls, when on the ground would position their wing under their elbow vertically, so that they could use their three short front fingers for scraping and climbing. Weirdly... the sign near it said that only recently they had discovered that their babies hatched from eggs.

They looked kind of like this when they stood.

DON'T EAT MY BABY!

(NO WORDS)

First, Grant was super excited that this was Diplodocus.  This plant eater was 30 meters from nose to the end of his tail... but Grant seemed only interested in the spot from where he pooped. Little boys, ugh!

I spy you through the trees, Diplodocus.

Brachiosaurus wasn't as big as the Brontosaurus length wise, but was much taller, kind of like a giraffe.

Todd loves anything that is taller than he is.

My usual view when looking up at Todd, only this Brachiosaurus is much taller.  And an airplane is about to hit his skull.  Or at least that's what I see from way down here.

The best part of this park is that about halfway through it, there's a delightful biergarten where you can take a break for some ice cream or a beer.  I love this messy kid.

Meanwhile, Todd and I did this.  (Remember when we went to Weltenburger Abbey?)

Hello there Mr. Croco.  I don't even care if you aren't a Croco. I'm gonna call you that because I love Crocos so much.

A mama and her baby.

Good news.  The egg was always first!  But were they?  Really?

Speaking of eggs... Dino babies are the cutest!

Hard shell, soft core.  Oh.  I meant the dinosaur, but that applies to Grant, too!  Euoplocephaus tutus had a big shell of armor, but he was a peaceful vegetarian. His back was hard armor, but his belly was super soft.  So when a predator tried to attack, he dropped to the ground to protect that cute belly.  The kid also has a cute belly.

Daddy and Grant with a Triceratops.  He seems friendly, despite the three horns that should have (and often did) crushed any T-Rex in the area.

But to me, the Triceratops was a sweet baby.

Baby Triceratops (or "three horned face") and Baby Bailey were also friendly!  Unless they were hungry!

Whoa that's a little scary!  (This is me when my kids make me mad, true story!)

But the T-Rex is the big daddy of them all.  The word Dinosaur is a combination of two Greek words:  Deions (meaning terrible) and sauros (meaning lizard.)  This one qualifies for that naming, especially since the word "Rex" means "king."  He was the king of the dinosaurs.

They had these great little signs with the actual meaning of the dinosaur names.

Toward the end of the path, you approach the end of the dinosaurs.  The dinosaurs had lived on Earth for 150 million years (WAY more than humans), and at the end of the Cretaceous period, a 10 km wide meteorite hit the Yucatan peninsula, decimating the dinosaurs and leaving a 180 km hole in the earth. But this gave rise to the mammals at the beginning of the Cenozoic era.  Birds are the only
animals descended from dinosaurs that survived this big blast.

This is a Mongolian Werewolf, and I don't even know if this is a real thing but it was one of the first animals to evolve after the extinction of the dinosaurs.  His closest living relative is a hippo, whose closest living relative is the whale.

Grant and a relative/ancestor of the rhinoceros. He's a Paraceratherium transouralicum and he's the biggest mammal ever to live on land (at this point of course!)

He's a type of this elephant (the Platybelodon danovi), although that's hard to believe.  The best part is the little kid seemingly giving this monster animal the middle finger. This guy lived about 10 million years ago.

The last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago, and woolly mammoths became extinct just before that, about 12,000 years ago.

It's like a hairy, large tusked elephant!

Grant, as a Neandertal.  There's a little sign next to this that says, "Human blood is all one color."

Primordial Earth was a sauna, which led to a rain storm that lasted thousands of years and filled the oceans.

This is what primordial earth looked like 4.6 billion years ago (but of course, it was liquid and hot!)

This 70 million year old recreation of the "D-Rex of the skies" is based off of bones that were found in Romania-- so they named him Dracula!  His wingspan was about 14 meters (or 46 feet) and he was the largest flying creature ever!

In this little museum, you can touch the REAL bones of a T-Rex!

The main attraction though is ROCKY!  This is a complete and intact REAL T-Rex skeleton that was found in South Dakota.  It's the ONLY original skeleton of a half-grown (aka: teenage) Tyrannosaurus Rex in the whole world!

It's estimated that Rocky is between 66-68 million years old.  He's about 30 feet long and was discovered in 1998.

To put it in perspective, Rocky is the one in the middle and the larger shadow T-Rex is a full grown dinosaur.

In total, we spent about 3-4 hours checking out the dinos, and really had a fun time!  Until next time, Dino Park!

Tarifa and Malaga, Spain

The end of our trip didn't go as planned.  It honestly was ... well... let's just say meh.  After the kids had been sick the week before our trip, I had been sick the first bunch of days of the trip... Todd finally came down with the crazy cold (mostly chest... somewhat in the nose.)  We drove from Gibraltar to Tarifa with the intent of having a somewhat lazy day near the beach.  

So when we finally made it to Tarifa... it seemed like a beautiful day.  But it was JUST SO WINDY.  I mean, so windy that we were covered in sand by the end of the day and we were still finding sand in our hair days later.  We walked down to the beach and found a little bar where we had a couple of drinks and played in the sand for a couple of hours.

The kids were just happy to have their toes in the sand, even if it was windy.

Natalie gives the beach a thumbs up!

Since Grant took his shoes and socks off, they became fair game for these dogs. The lab came right over and tried to take Grant's shoe (ummm, NO.)  We managed to grab that back, but HE managed to get away with a sock.  I said, "Oh we're never seeing that sock again!" as they took off running down the beach with it.  (They did bring it back eventually!  The dog owner had to retrieve it ha ha.)

I spy Morocco in the distance (mainly on the left behind the edge of Tarifa.)

I love this little cutie at a beach bar in Tarifa.

Natalie clearly felt that she needed some vitamin D.  So she grabbed one of the little beach "chairs" and plopped it down in the sand. 

Grant's new thing is drawing out wars on paper.  He says he doesn't like war, but he likes seeing borders change.  He's really into maps right now, and you KNOW he gets that from me.  So he plopped right down at one of these barrels after Daddy drew the outline of Asia's current countries and he got to work on moving those borders around with each takeover.

Todd took this picture when he went to the bathroom because these signs were not helpful to him.  (Side note: He guessed right!)

At one point, I decided to walk down to the water with the kids.  The sand was blowing so hard as you can see by the little streets of blowing sand in the above picture.

Tarifa was really beautiful, and we pretty much had the beach to ourselves (see Morocco on the far right in the distance?)

It's a little sign from my dad!  Near the bottom of the Seagram's gin bottle, you can see, "Lawrenceburg, IN."  My dad used to work in that factory!  Not all of the Seagram's bottles have the town name though.

We finally decided our lengthy happy hour was over and decided to walk back through the town of Tarifa.  The Castle of Tarifa looms over the port and it was built in 960!

These potted plants made me miss Córdoba a little bit.  Don't walk through Tarifa in March during siesta, because there was hardly ANYTHING open.

Because it was siesta time, we hit up the only open place in the whole city (the grocery store) and grabbed some tapas and wine and decided to enjoy our super awesome back patio.

It even came equipped with Astroturf.  It was warmer and less windy in the back, where Todd and Grant are sitting here.

The views were so beautiful though.  This picture makes it look really warm (and not so windy.)

As the sun began to go down, you really got a nice view of Morocco.

Adios, sunshine.

The sun setting over the Atlantic.

The kids enjoyed the sunset with us.  Even after it was gone!

Lordy, the next day was so trying.  We had previously purchased tickets on the ferry from Tarifa to Tangiers, Morocco, several months in advance.  We planned on a day tour of Tangiers with a guide, and then to return in the late evening to Tarifa.  So we strolled down to the port, passing the old bull ring on the way.  Doesn't every Spanish city have a bull ring?

The kids were SO looking forward to getting "another continent." But it just wasn't in the cards today.  The winds were so awful, that all of the ferries from Tarifa were cancelled.  They told us that ferries were going out of Algeciras but they were delayed by several hours, and each trip was taking MUCH longer than they had planned.  When FRS told us they would refund all of our money, we took them up on that and cancelled our trip to Morocco.  This is what a VERY disappointed family looks like.

Because it was SO windy in Tarifa, and because there was just NOTHING to do in this town this time of year, we decided to leave and head for Málaga instead.  We still had another night planned in Tarifa, but with the cancellation of our planned trip to Morocco, it just didn't make sense to stay there.  So we went back to our beautiful apartment (look at these colors!  It's totally unfiltered!), packed up our stuff, and drove to Málaga.

We made the two hour drive to Málaga and the kids were begging for pizza so we stopped at an Italian restaurant and had some beer and pizza in the sunshine.  Too bad Todd couldn't join us for this.

Whoa!  There's a lot going on in this picture!  Look at those windows!

We strolled around the city and passed the Málaga Cathedral (also known as Our Lady of Incarnation.)  We didn't go in, for fear of Grant leaving his EpiPen inside (I kid, of course!) but it was sure pretty from the outside!

Our panorama of the facade of the Cathedral made it look round! HA!  Work was started on it in 1530 but it wasn't finished for 100+ years.

The beautiful Spanish Baroque Palacio Episcopal, or the Bishop's Palace is across the street from the Cathedral.

We decided to walk over to the big Mirador Princess Ferris wheel and passed this really cool tree and red flowers behind the tourist information stand.

What a cool tree!  I'm such a nerd!

OF COURSE the Ferris wheel was closed for most of March so we couldn't ride it. Boo.  That's just how this trip ended.

My dad had a beautiful bird of paradise in the front of my parents house, which my mom just sold and moved out of a few weeks prior to this.  I love these plants, mostly for that, but partly because they come in Auburn colors.

I also loved this brunfelsia pauciflora tree (native to Brazil) which is commonly known as "Morning, Noon and Night."

We had a really nice time strolling around the Parque de Málaga, which sits parallel to the harbor.

Across the street from the Parque de Málaga, the University of Málaga has a beautiful main building where the President's offices are located.

Málaga even has a Roman Theater that dates back to the first century BC.  It was only used until the 3rd century AD when it pretty much fell into disrepair until the Moors used parts of it to build the Alcazaba that you see behind it. 

Grant needs a bigger head ha ha.  My little bullfighter and flamenco dancer.

Malaga's manhole covers weren't as impressive as some others I've seen.  Maybe they were nicer when they were newer!

We had a late day flight the next day from Málaga to Madrid, so we headed back to the car (that we had pre-filled with all of our bags earlier in the day).  As we were paying for our two day parking, I noticed this on the wall. WHAT?  Every parking garage should have one of these!  Heck, I want one of these for myself!

Speaking of breathalyzers... We had bought a bottle of wine at one of our stops on this trip, and we kept the wine with us with the intent to finish it.  Of course that never happened, so I said, "Take a picture of me drinking some of this wine!"  (Right before I dumped it out of course!)

We took off south from Málaga over the Mediterranean.  It was just so pretty!

Once we got up to our hotel near the Madrid airport, we wanted to get some food, but the restaurant didn't open until 8pm!  They did serve some little snackies which we had with our happy hour, but then we went back to the room and had the kids get ready for bed and get ourselves packed up to go home the following day.  When we finally got to eat dinner, we splurged a bit and got the flan for dessert!  YUM!

Ok I'm only putting this picture here to remind myself of the time that I was NERDING OUT over seeing Kelvin Helmholtz waves in the clouds for the first time from our airplane at the Madrid airport as we were flying back to Munich!  They weren't as pronounced as some others may have seen, but the remnants were there none the less. You can barely see them (center, and slightly to the left) because I was using my iPhone to capture it (and you know you can't zoom in with an iPhone and expect the photo to be clear) but I saw them and that's all that matters.  Meteorology geeks, unite!

Until next time, Spain!  And you know there will totally be a next time!  See ya in 2033!