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Yes, we’re going through the canal, one of the largest and most difficult engineering projects ever undertaken. We’ll experience first-hand what it’s like to be raised 85 feet through a series of locks. Talk about cool! We will also explore the beautiful sights of Panama City.

We’ll then board the bus for Costa Rica - the land of a million birds and butterflies, volcanoes, orchids and wildflowers. Accompanying our group will be familiar Grand Junction personality George Tracy who now calls Costa Rica his second home. With him as our guide we will see places only the natives know about.

$4100 per person, double occupancy - All inclusive!

For more information, email Mike Perry or call him at (970) 242-0971, ext. 204.

Register online - registration deadline is March 10.

• Since it opened August 15, 1914 more than 960,000 ships have transited the Canal. (That’s almost 1 million!)

• It takes a ship an average of 8-10 hours to transit through the Canal.

• A ship saves 7,860 nautical miles when traveling from New York to San Francisco through the Canal instead of the Cape of Horn.

• The three sets of locks of the two-lane Canal work as water elevators that lift the ships to the level of Gatun Lake, 26 meters over sea level, and later lower them again to sea level on the other side of the Isthmus of Panama. (26 meters is over 85 feet!)

• Expansion of the Canal is slated to be complete in 2014, 100 years after the Canal was built.

• The expansion will add new locks - one on the Pacific and one on the Atlantic side of the Canal.

Check out this cool animation on how the locks work.

Retrieved from http://www.pancanal.com/

Our first day will be a long drive to the Zuni Pueblo but we will be treated with a tour of the Spanish mission as well as the old pueblo itself. The mission is over 400 years old and the pueblo has been inhabited since long before that. While very remote, Zuni is the largest pueblo in New Mexico and its isolation has allowed the traditional culture to thrive.

On the second day we’ll tour what is often called the oldest continuous inhabited place in the United States; Acoma Pueblo. The “Sky City” is built high on a mesa with limited access. The way of life in the pueblo has been virtually unchanged over the last thousand years with the exception of a massive Spanish mission built in the community. That evening we’ll head to old town Albuquerque and tour old town.

The next morning will be spent touring the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center and then driving to Santa Fe for more tours including the Palace of the Governors and the famous St. Francis Cathedral and Loretto Chapel.

Thursday will be spent taking the beautiful drive from Santa Fe to Taos with a stop at the San Ildefonso Pueblo. Before heading home the next day we will also tour the pueblo at Taos, the Taos Historical Museum, and the San Francisco de Asis Church. Along the way we will discuss the various cultures we will visit, the role the Spanish played in the area, and the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

The cost of the trip includes transportation, lodging, and admission to all the sites. The deadline to register is February 25. Register for this great trip online.

Mike Perry and John Goddard - bucket list buddies

As a 15 year old boy, John Goddard, world famous adventurer (and good friend of Museum of Western Colorado’s Executive Director, Mike Perry), sat down one rainy day and drew up “My Life List” - a list of 127 goals he wished to experience or achieve in his lifetime. John, now in his 80s, has accomplished 109 of them. Pretty impressive as the list is not full of easy goals. He has inspired people all over the globe to draw up their own life lists. Or bucket lists, as some folks call them.

There is no shortage of books and websites on the subject - even Hollywood got into the act with “The Bucket List” and showed that not all lists contain dare-devil and exotic adventures. Some are as simple as “Laugh till I cry” or “Help a complete stranger.” The bottom line is to engage in life.

Our mission is to educate, preserve our rich historic legacy and inspire our community to become engaged in their past and present. We offer opportunities to do so through our educational programs, tours and treasures.

So, would you like to climb a 14er? Cruise through fjords of Alaska? Maybe you want to experience a glacier calve in Patagonia or catch the sunrise through a the sky filled with hot-air balloons? Would you like to see the world’s smallest plant-eating dinosaur - smaller than a housecat - or perhaps ponder the culture who created pottery long before enclosed kilns were developed in the area.

Come see us sometime if you haven’t visited in awhile. Examine those treasures of the past and experience the adventures of the present (and future!). There’s no time like now to dip into your bucket list or create one if you need one.

A small but excited crowd was given the pleasure of being the first to see Fruitadens today at Dinosaur Journey.

In case you’ve been hiding under a rock, Fruitadens is the latest sensation in the Grand Valley. Discovered in 1976 by George Callison, Fruitadens is the smallest plant eating dinosaur in the world and is believed to have lived 150 million years ago, during the late Jurassic period.

Congratulations to those who worked hard to get this super cool exhibit in place.

Don’t miss seeing Fruitadens at Dinosaur Journey Museum, 550 Jurassic Ct., Fruita.

On January 21, Terry Hammer, Jr. gave a presentation on the Colorado Militia from 1861 to 1927. Around 50 people attended January’s program.

All Oral History Programs will be held at noon in the Whitman Educational Center, 248 S. Fourth Street. The programs are jointly sponsored by the Museum of Western Colorado and the Mesa County Historical Society and are free to the public.

Bring your lunch and enjoy these presentations. For more information, please contact the Loyd Files Research Library at (970) 242-0971, ext. 209.

Thanks to an exchange with the Museum of Natural History of Los Angeles County, the Museum of Western Colorado will be the first in the world to display the Fruitadens model. The exhibit explains a little about how we know what we know about the animal and some of the history of the work at the Fruita Paleontological Area, which the Bureau of Land Management co-manages with the Museum of Western Colorado and the City of Fruita.

At the unveiling Dr. George Callison will also be present to talk about the find.

Where: Dinosaur Journey Museum, 550 Jurassic Ct.; Fruita, Colorado

When: Wednesday, February 10 at 11 am

Zebulon Miracle and Museum member Pat Martin with BasketmakerIII pot

The Museum of Western Colorado received a very generous donation this week. Museum member Pat Martin donated what is believed to be a Basketmaker III (roughly AD 500) piece of pottery. Further research will be required but, right now, it is believed to be one of the oldest pieces of pottery from the area in the Museum’s collection. The large size and the fact that the piece is virtually complete is extremely rare. The pottery had been in Pat’s family for sometime and they decided the Museum would be the best place for it. We were all very excited and in shock when Pat said she wanted to donate it, and we are hard at work making room for it in the exhibit gallery.

February 9: Scotland

February 16: Alaska

March 16: Chile, Easter Island, Bolivia & Peru

March 23: Patagonia

March 30: Brazil & the Amazon River

All presentations are at Noon and are free to the public; however, donations are welcome.

Whitman Educational Center
4th and Ute, Grand Junction

Download a flyer here.

Fifteen months ago, the administrators in charge of Dinosaur Journey were as desperate and distraught as a Tyrannosaurus rex roaming a land filled only with ferns and cycads.

The mechanical components of the Fruita museum’s dinosaurs that allowed them to spit, hiss and growl were breaking down. The building’s stained, threadbare carpet was showing its 16-year-old age. The number of paid visitors slipped more than 5 percent from 43,600 in 2007 to 41,200 in 2008, as the recession choked off discretionary spending…

Read the whole article in The Daily Sentinel here.