"My Visit to Dinosaur World"

I freely admit to being a dinosaur-freak

I was the biggest fan of The Flintstones in elementary school.

I was the kid that begged his mom to buy a cerain box of cereal just because it had toy dinos inside.

I was the kid who brought all of his toy dinos to school and give an hour lecture on prehistoric life, correctly pronouncing all their Latin names, and knowing their individual lengths, weights and heights by heart.

When I was a teenager I drove nearly 100 miles to see The Sinclair Dinosaur Exhibit that was on tour from The World's Fair.

I made a special trip to a local distributor to buy an unopened box of "Dinosaurs Attack!" gum cards (just to make sure I had a whole set.)

I've watched every dino-flick I can think of, no matter how "cheasy" the special effects may have been; sometimes as much as three or four times.

So, No Big Surprize that today when in the local town of Cave City (KY.) during it's annual "Good Ol' Days" weekend celebration, and the Dinosaur Park (located at CC's I-65 Interchange: exit 53 here in Kentucky) had a dollar-day admission price for the locals, I had to go! The admission usually is almost ten bucks per person. And, it's worth it for an individual, but would be pretty costly for a tourist family if you had several kids that were "into" dinosaurs. Still, it'd be a pretty nice visit. They have at least 70 different dinosaur exhibits along a 1/2 mile trail. Plus there's a free museum, free movie house and other free things for the kids to do. I'm sure one could actually spend a good half a day looking and reading the signs at the individual scenes. Plus it's only 10 miles from Mammoth Cave National Park and there's all sorts of stuff between the Dino-Park and The National Park. Hotels, restaurants, gas stations, etc. They're just all sorta located altogther in that area and a good place for a vacation.

But, I digress. Back to the dinos!

There's a life-size T-Rex in the trees before you get to the entrance to the park. Plus a full-size tricerotops at the entrance gate. The front of the gift shop entrance (which you go thru to get to the main area of the park and where one also buys tickets) is decorated with various dinosaurs. The whole place has a very "Jurassic Park" look to it, which I'm sure is what they'd aimed at (and succeeded).

If you do go sometime, skip buying much at the gift shop. Jacked-up prices caused me to buy just a couple of postcards, but they do have a great variety of toy dinosaurs, larger detailed models, t-shirts, fossils and the whole nine yards dedicated to "the theme".

And here following are links to several photos I took today. I think I took around 60 shots and while editing them probably eliminated 10 due to lighting factors or clarity, so this is just part of them; the ones I thought looked the best and gave one a good idea of what they had to offer.


Entrance Dino

"You talkin' to ME?!"

Group Shot

"Hi, Yuz!"

Dinos Looking At Tourists

Beaked Dinos

Duckbills

Mama & Her Babies

Tricerotops Family

"A Nice Couple"

MYSELF Next to Interstate Sign (for size perspective)