A little nostalgia and Americana.
When I was little, I played with dinosaur toys, read about them, and generally obsessed over them. Shout out to The Magic School Bus Explores in the Age of Dinosaurs and Eyewitness Virtual Reality Dinosaur Hunter for starting me out early on video games.
Clearly, this obsession started quite young. (And likely was encouraged.) I love this shot my mom took. It’s slightly unnerving.
I vaguely remember this dinosaur themed birthday party. I think it’s still up there with the best.
Dr. Seuss and dinosaurs = living the dream.
In the battle between my love of cats and dinosaurs, dinosaurs won this Halloween. A change from being Simba for a few years straight.
I can’t separate my love for kitschy dinosaurs from my interest in roadside Americana. All across the continent stand huge fiberglass dinosaurs. Revealing toothy grins near rundown gas stations, parks, and tourist traps. They’re scientifically incorrect, but that’s not the point. They’re a break in the wide spaces. An excuse to pull out and take a silly photo.
I think the underrated Austin icon, the T-Rex from Peter Pan Golf, is a formative hero of mine. They’ve been around since 1948. Look at this dapper guy.
The new paint job still alarms me when I see it. But you can still drink beer and play putt-putt under it.
For anyone else who has been to Peter Pan Golf, this may look familiar. This photo is how I actually remember Peter Pan Golf. Sun-dried clumps of ??? about to mangle my flip-flops when a ball wasn’t getting stuck in it.
Anyway, there are plenty of dinosaur statues scattered around in my memories. I remember my sisters discovering some at a special exhibit at the San Antonio Botanical Gardens. So the torch has been passed. Maybe.
Part Two: Drumheller, Alberta: A Logical Conclusion to Kitschy Dinosaur Love
We went to Drumheller in no small part to the audiodrama, Badlands Cola. If you like cults, deserts, hate-flirting, and dinosaurs this listen is for you.
On the outskirts of town, between alien-looking hoodoos, the Royal Tyrrell Museum welcomes visitors to it’s incredible collection of fossils (over 160,000 cataloged).
And the town itself is littered with dinosaur statues. Street names named after species, benches with little dino friends, and plenty of dino-puns. Stay at the Jurassic Motel or the Tyrannosaurus Rest Bed and Breakfast.
It leans in, and then some.
Here are a few of our favorite statues:
An homage to coal mining, a very saccharine triceratops, and a parasaurolophus with a parasol. Cheeky. We especially loved the lesbian pride colored triceratops. But what’s that in the distance?
It’s the ‘World’s Largest Dinosaur’. At 86 feet high it could likely swallow an actual tyrannosaurus up.
You can pay to go into it’s mouth. I was plenty happy staying on the ground. Toes for scale.
Also, a hockey game was on next door, and the locals didn’t even look up at this enormous thing while passing under its shadow. I guess you get used to anything.
Anyway, I love these unabashedly kitschy dinosaurs. A testament to retro goofiness and excess. Part of a world of bygone roadtrips: bright teal signs against desert backdrops, midcentury stars on a motel on a now crumbling highway, muffler men, and oh-so-much neon. They’re not high art, nor do they need to be.
One day, I will visit the dinosaur civil war re-enactors. It’s too wild to miss.
Enter into a time tunnel and discover Stonewall Jackson battling a vicious spinosaurus! get surrounded by deadly meat eaters! See Abe Lincoln after he’s lassoed a pteranodon chewing up the Gettysburg address! witness a stegosaurus being milked! If you like prehistoric creatures and civil war history, you’ll flip out over Dinosaur Kingdom II!
https://www.dinosaurkingdomii.com/
Read More:
- https://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/history-of-roadside-dinosaurs-parks-statues
- https://www.roadarch.com/dinos/tx.html
- https://www.badlandscola.com/
- https://www.austinmonthly.com/how-peter-pan-mini-golf-remains-a-piece-of-old-austin/
