As we prepared to leave the Grand Canyon last night, Ann happened across one of those little “free magazines” with things to do in the area. In the DEAD back page, very inside corner, near the 1/2 page crease of the magazine, where someone had sloppily folded it in the wrong place and nearly covered it, there was an ad for an attraction that definitely caught our interest. So much so, that we had to rearrange our entire schedule for the next morning, just to make sure we didn’t arrive before it opened. “One of us” is a lot ADHD, so we knew if we arrived, say 30 minutes before they opened, “one of us” 100% wouldn’t have waited for that lock to unlock. Timing for this attraction was EVERYTHING. ⏰
Without further ado, this was our very first stop today…
Yep, the Poozeum, in quaint little downtown Williams, AZ., a museum and gift shop dedicated entirely to fossilized dinosaur poop. The fancy term is coprolite, but we aren’t really that fancy a folk to use a five dollar word when a 25 cent word will work just fine.
The owner and proprietor was very enthusiastic about his museum, and honestly, it was really well set up, really well organized, and absolutely entertaining. We also have to say that his shop front door was constantly opening and more people coming in.
There was a lot to see and a lot to learn about, but there were three clear standouts.
I had to put the pictures in. If that offends anyone, well, if you were easily offended, you probably would have stopped reading quite a while ago. So, off we go!
1) There was a whole display of dino dookie with ancient bites taken out of them. As some of you might know, we sure loved our little wiener dog, Pepper, who passed away this March, but she had one shameful, disgusting habit. She was VERY into “recycling.” But she only liked recycling poop. We felt that the poo biting animal was likely one of Pepper’s dinosaur ancestors. However, if Pepper had been alive back then, there would be no fossil record. NONE. She was quite thorough at her job. 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
2) The next crowd favorite was a very girthy nugget that you could tell started as a very relaxing dinosaur dump, and then a T-Rex must have come around the corner, because those dinosaur buns must have SLAMMED shut, and the dookie got pinched off so hard that we bet there was an injury.
3) Worlds biggest coprolite. Certified by Guinness, no less. This is a Tyrannosaurus Rex blambo that was so big it has a name, for goodness sake.
Meet Barnum, a prolonged poo measuring over 26.5” long (longer if it hadn’t had to make the right turn to get out of his poor bottom), 6” wide, which means something else was 6” wide 😳(The only bigger buns holes that we know of are the people that parked next to us in the Zion campground) and it weighs in excess of 22 lbs. 😮
I bet it was a massive relief to drop this load off during this fella’s early morning hike. PURE RELIEF! “We” 😉 can relate.
We finished our tour of the collection and we both decided that it is going to be very hard to top this experience. I mean, the National Parks are great and all that, but they didn’t have a finely curated Poozeum to explore.
We congratulated the owner on his establishment, bought our souvenirs (we had to get a Poozeum sticker for the Airstream door!) and we headed back on the road to our next destination, the Meteor Crater State Park, in Winslow AZ!
If you can see the pic above, that is the famous meteor crater, on the left. You can sort of see the raised edges where the meteor impacted and displaced a bunch of rock and dirt.
This site was about 5 miles off I-40, so if you are ever in the area, you can just skip it, like we did. We got to the lobby of the heavily secured site and were funneled into the line for the cashier. At $29 per person, we hesitated for about a millisecond, and said, nope, not that important to us. We made an about face, and headed back out to the truck.
So here is a pic of us in the Meteor Crater State Park parking lot, pleased with our smart financial decision. And smart use of our time.
And here is a google image.
There you go.
The rest of the day was spent gripping the steering wheel with both hands, as we bounced along rough highway with 20+ mph winds pushing us around.
We made it to our stop for the night, Grants, NM, where we found that it had gotten so hot in the airstream with 6+ hrs on the road, that our butter had gone funky. Learning experience while traveling in hot sunny weather, put anything melty in the cab of the truck or in the fridge.
We have a few nights like this on the road, while on our way to Weatherford TX. We plan to hit a few more really cool roadside attractions along the way. We already see that we will be going right by Russell’s Truck and Travel Center (with a classic car museum) and Cadillac Ranch. We may even dip down to see what’s what in Roswell, NM! 👽 More to come. If we don’t disappear. 🚀
TaterTotTales 