Reliving My Childhood: Visiting Dinosaur World!

Ok, let me explain. There's a backstory to this.

Ever since I've been passing through Kentucky on my way back to Nashville when I visit up north, I've seen this massive inflatable T-Rex (that's legit like 30-40 feet tall) from the interstate with a sign that says "Dinosaur World, You Just Missed Us!".

And for literally 3 years I thought that meant that this was like a seasonal thing and every single gosh darn time I passed it was always out of season.

I started to wonder why I was ALWAYS missing the dinos...before I realized that the sign just meant that I'd just passed where they were at....thus "just missed" them.

So...in honor of me being an absolute dingus, let's start with a bit of redemption!

BOOM!

(Also please help fam, I've looked everywhere, but cannot find instructions for how to rotate an image in Markdown!)

There he is! The T-Rex in all it's glory. WE FINALLY GOT TO SEE HIM UP CLOSE....LET'S GOOOOOO

And so yeah, after many, many years, me and a friend were coming back from a day hike at Mammoth Cave and we decided...this is long overdue. Let's go have some fun, relive our childhoods, and hit up Dinosaur World.

And so, we went forth to conquer!

Basically, it's like a dream come true....if you're 4-6 year old.

But, since I like to live my life as if I'm looking at everything through a child's eyes (just to be more grateful and more in awe of the world)....that meant that DINOSAUR WORLD WAS EPIC!

I knew the whole time that if I'd visited it as a kid, I would be so stoked.

There are basically 50-60 sets of different sculptures of all these different species of Dinos!

Look at this dude, he's literally got a fin on his back!

Brontosauri are some of my favorites!

And so so so many more that I'd never even heard of.

Like these guys:

This was one of the meat-eaters that I'd never heard of, and while they were really small, take a look at those teeth! Must have been ferocious.

And I also learned a ton on this "field trip" (let's call it that!), thanks to these plaques that were everywhere, giving more of the history of each of the unique species:

(Sorry again, all my plaque photos were vertical....)

And then there were a bunch of the species that I had seen when I used to read all the Magic School Bus books while I was growing up!

Here's some of those:

Then, there was also this dude who basically is like a T-Rex but with a horn! So like a rhino-T-Rex. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

Over here, peep the T-Rex in the back left eyeing down the Chasmosauri...run little baby Chasmis...RUNNNNN! (Yes, these look like Triceratops, but I learned from one of the plaques that they are in fact completely distinct in multiple ways! Pretty awesome learning cool stuff like this.)

And some more dinosaur pics:

Dino with big teeth:

Skeleton Dino:

And, to wrap up the day, there was a WOOLY MAMMOTH section as well!

Y'all. I love woolies.

They're so cool. I literally wish they still existed.

But, this will do for now.

Step forth into the Mammoth Garden!

And that's a wrap! Truly epic day reliving my childhood over at Dinosaur World!

If you ever pass it while driving south through Kentucky, make sure to stop by!