Quick stop in Dickinson, North Dakota for some sight seeing and to stretch the legs. Kids are being really good about all the driving, and there is a dinosaur museam for us to see. It was especially fun because Brianna just made it through a Girl Scout camp about "fossil fun", and she loved it. We saw examples of dig sites, and a bunch of minerals and other interesting stuff. Outside of the museum was some petrified wood, which is the most amazing thing you could ever see. It looks like a tree stump, but when you go to touch it it is actually as like any hard rock you could ever imagine! It is unique to the bad lands because these trees somehow were buried whole and found in coal mines years later.

"This can happen, for example, as rivers overflow their banks, burying the forest floor under a layer of sand and silt, or when forests are covered by volcanic ash. After burial, mineralized groundwater begins to seep through the wood, coating cell walls and filling the intercellular cavities."

Anyway, the kids loved it, and gave them a chance to get out of the car. Next stop the badlands, and our first campsite of the trip!