The Wyoming Expedition
by Kris Leja

Kris Leja at Bighorn National Park in Wyoming
Photo: © Project Exploration

Hi, my name is Kris Leja. I’ve been a Junior Paleontologist for three years. I have also participated in Dinosaur Giants, and went to Montana in 2003. This summer I got to go on the Donor Trip to Wyoming. The Donor Trip lets people who help fund Project Exploration's work go out on a dinosaur dig, which funds Project Exploration programs. I was a student representative and field assistant on the Donor Trip because of my previous experiences in the field and in the classroom.

Below are some of the pictures I took and some excerpts from my field journal.

Thursday, June 23, 2005
Mary Beth Perez, Project Exploration cofounder Gabrielle Lyon, her daughter Ava, and I got to the Kedesh Ranch a day early to begin setting up for the rest of the expedition team members. We rented a Dodge Durango pickup truck from Billings, Montana and went to Wal-Mart and loaded it with tons of juices and snacks and stuff. The drive through Montana and Wyoming was awesome and everybody was saying it was "so green", they were getting a lot of rain this year. Once we got to the ranch I had to go exploring.

Ava, Project Exploration cofounder Gabrielle Lyon, and Kris Leja.
Photo: M. E. Perez

Friday, June 24
I got to go for a hike around the Kedesh Ranch. To the right, the owner's house and horses. On the left and back was all mountains! I climbed over a fence and out in the back up a small hill to take some pictures of the mountains. I also saw some cool granite rocks. When I got back to the cabin everybody was already sleeping. It’s barely 9:15 pm and still light outside.

The mountains near the Kedesh Ranch in Wyoming.
Photo: K. Leja

Saturday, June 25
I woke up at 7 o’clock and went to Dirty Annie’s for breakfast. I asked for pancakes and sausage and got two normal sausages and one gigantic pancake—about a foot in diameter and an inch thick. I couldn’t even finish half of it.

I just got back from star gazing. We didn’t see anything because the clouds covered most of the sky. But we did get to see Jupiter a little when the clouds moved out of our way. The ride home was fun. We blasted some disco music on the car stereo during the ride back to the ranch.

Sunday, June 26
We ate breakfast. Ray Vodden, a fossil preparator from Paul Sereno's dinosaur lab, and I headed to the shed to pick stuff up for the site and for the shed out in the field. We took a shortcut dirt road and saw the guy at the shed. He followed us down a crazy bumpy road to the site, right around the base of the Bighorn Mountains.

Hiking to the dig site.
Photo: K. Leja

We dropped the equipment off at the shed and the crew met us up there. We went for a hike to some older quarries where a famous Swiss paleotologist dug up a lot of dinosaur bones. We made it to our site. We got all our tools and started digging. I always feel like I’m going to mess something up, but I got into it really fast. The guys found a jacket buried, and Ray was working on the legs of the Camerasaurus. Paul started jacketing, and then it started raining. We covered the site and drove in the rain back to Kedesh Ranch.

Yeehaw! I just got back from a horseback ride—awesome! I was a little goofy on the horse at first but Doc (the horse) and I got along fine towards the end. He was afraid of the white, unicorn-looking donkey. He kept messing with the other horses. First we went up this steep hill and then around a bend for about an hour. The people at the horse ranch were really cool. They helped me out telling me what to do and what not to do.

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