With only two days left of our trip, we landed in Salt Lake City around noon and immediately headed to the Natural History Museum of Utah without a moment's rest. It was an intense schedule, as we planned to visit five museums in two days, each several hours apart by bus (we ended up skipping Brigham Young University on the second day, so it became four museums).
The Natural History Museum of Utah didn't have much to see. I bought eight well-made, albeit slightly expensive, skull pins at the gift shop. I somewhat regret not buying all the types as we moved on to the Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum.

After a two-hour bus ride, we arrived at this museum, whose highlight was the real fossil exhibits of recently discovered dinosaurs such as Utahraptor and Gastonia. The shop, though small, had unique items and was quite nice. It's understandable that I didn't make it to the extinct mammal exhibit because I spent too much time scrutinizing the items there. (The shop was located between the dinosaur and mammal exhibits, and by the time I was done browsing, it was time to leave.) Here, I bought an acrylic stand with a replica footprint of a small dinosaur (Ornithomimidae?) that was an original museum product (I love things like this).

The visit lasted about an hour and a half, after a four-hour round trip. It felt like a museum in the suburbs, but America is truly vast. By the time we returned to Salt Lake, it was already evening, and the day's itinerary was over. The last day was dedicated to the Dinosaur National Monument, a place every dinosaur fan must visit at least once in their lifetime. It's that famous site where a gigantic bone bed is covered by a building. We passed through Vernal, the "Dinosaur Capital," on the way. Vernal is a longed-for place that has revitalized its town with dinosaurs, familiar from books. Dinosaur signs abound throughout the town, and souvenir shops were supposed to be treasure troves of dinosaur goods. I heard that the previous year's tour stayed in Vernal, but this time, it was changed to Salt Lake City, which was quite disappointing! We planned to stop by the Field House Museum in town on our way back, so I looked forward to that as we headed to the sacred site. Contrary to my expectations, there weren't many souvenirs at the Dinosaur National Monument (only T-shirts), so I only bought small items like a dinosaur road sign (Ultrasaurus, commemorating Utah) at a nearby souvenir shop. Finally, we arrived at our last stop, the Field House Museum, but we were pressed for time and were only given 30 minutes for the visit. I resigned myself to skipping the visit and rushed straight to the museum shop. I found some great things. There were four splendidly made pewter dinosaur models (there were more, but my budget was limited, unfortunately). There was a Velociraptor with a peculiar charm (at the time, a revolutionary full-feathered model, but with a tail, standing on three points, yet unstable), an Euoplocephalus, and an inaccurate but cool Allosaurus skull model, among others. The 30 minutes flew by.

This concluded our North American tour. It was an incredibly packed and dreamlike eight days, but my dream of "strolling through Vernal all day and buying all the dinosaur merchandise I could wish for" will have to wait for another time.