We love dinosaurs in our house. Our boys have all enjoyed playing with and learning about dinosaurs. We also love the Natural History Museum in Utah. It is such a fun place for all ages. So we were extra excited to visit DinoFest at the Natural History Museum.
Once a year, NHMU (Natural History Museum Utah) in Salt Lake City hosts DinoFest for one weekend. During this weekend they have paleontologist talks, extra fossils set up, vendors selling rocks and fossils, and much more. The whole museum is filled with dinosaur stuff.
Most of the extra dinosaur happenings occur on the first floor as you enter the museum. There were crafts for the kids and lots of booths set up. Some booths were run by state and national sites showing off fossils from their locations. Others were vendors selling dinosaur themed merchandise. We also liked the gems and mineral displays.
Our favorite part of DinoFest was being allowed to go into the paleontology lab. The lab was open to visitors and there were volunteers talking about all of the projects happening in the lab. We were fascinated with the fossils they were cleaning up and the research they were doing. It was such a neat experience to be able to go inside the lab. Regularly, you can watch the workers in the lab through glass windows, but going inside was really amazing.
The nice thing about DinoFest is that tickets are the same price as regular admission, but you get to see many extra dinosaur displays. We took the opportunity to enjoy the entire museum while we were at DinoFest, too.
If you love dinosaurs, this is a must-do event. Our kids thought it was really neat, and we were so glad that we could enjoy the whole museum. We love that Utah is filled with so many dinosaur fossils. Check out our list of 15 Dinosaur Places in Utah. NHMU is on that list.
