White Post, Virginia - As soon as we passed the intersection of US Routes 340 and 522, I saw it: the towering, billboard-size street sign on a grassy hill.
A seven-foot saber-toothed tiger and a pink octopus flanked the white Disneyland-like letters before us. If this was a preview of what oddball experience was to come, my mother and I were all in.
“We're here!” I announced. Work had brought my mother, Nancy, to Washington from California and, after years of trips to historical landmarks, monuments and museums, this time we opted for a journey back in time.
We had come to Dinosaur Land.
My mother was already smiling. “Do you recall a prehistoric octopus?” she asked. “A very large pink one?”
“Nothing comes to mind,” I told her, laughing, “but it's been a while.”
Like a lot of people, I caught dinosaur fever as a kid. I grew up with America's favourite purple dinosaur, Barney, but developed a deep fascination with real dinosaurs in elementary school. A self-confessed know-it-all, I learned to distinguish the carnivores from the herbivores, the “nice ones” from the “mean ones,” and devoured every dinosaur book I could get my hands on.
I cried watching The Land Before Time when the mother of the main character, Littlefoot, a baby apatosaurus, died defending him from a Tyrannosaurus rex. At 10, I gasped at the looming, 42-foot-long skeleton cast of Sue, the largest and most complete T. rex fossil in existence, at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
Over time, as my interests expanded, I tossed my dinosaur flash cards and my knowledge faded from memory. Fifteen years ago, I could have easily told you the difference between a brachiosaurus and an iguanodon. Today, I couldn't tell you the differences between a dinosaur and a reptile.
But there I was. The 56 fibreglass, super-size monsters at Dinosaur Land, located in White Post, in the ridge of the Shenandoah Mountain, don't shift or shake, growl or roar. There are no animatronics or CGI. This isn't exactly Jurassic World. However, if you're willing to overlook that, you can spend a couple of hours where dinosaurs still roam — figuratively speaking, that is — and recapture how it once felt to be in such awe of them.
Through doors fashioned as giant open jaws, we entered the Rebel Korn'r Gift Shop. Joseph Geraci, Dinosaur Land's founder, was inspired to create the park after a 1962 visit to Orlando, Florida. Impressed with the giant statues at gift shops and miniature golf courses there, he bought five prehistoric creatures to draw attention to his Rebel Korn'r store. Business boomed; by 1967, he decided to rename his property Dinosaur Land. He gradually added to his collection and by 1985 had amassed 36.
Some of the original five were animated, including the woolly mammoth, whose trunk moved and ears flapped. However, Geraci opted for the simpler sort after the mammoth's trunk was stolen. The local veterinarian called Geraci, claiming he had something of his. “Daddy said, 'What could you possibly have of mine?' “ said one of his daughters, Joann Leight. “He said, 'I have an elephant's trunk in my mailbox.' I think that was kind of the last straw for him.”
Eventually, to prevent theft and vandalism, Geraci moved his collection to the large field behind his shop. Still, there were the occasional heists. “We had the airplane stolen out of King Kong's hand three times,” said his daughter Barbara Seldon. A caveman was also taken on several occasions. “The first time, they found him in the Shenandoah River,” Leight said. “The police officer responded to a call about a body floating in the river.” After years of retrievals, the cave dweller was sold to a fraternity from Shepherd College in West Virginia and became its mascot.
Both sisters were surprised their father stuck with the business for as long as he did. “He was once a plumber, had a gas station, owned real estate, built houses and managed a restaurant,” Seldon said. “It seemed like he'd get interested in something, do a fabulous job at it and then sell it and start over again! But he always stuck with the dinosaurs.” Since Geraci's death in 1987, his three daughters have managed the park, with Leight and Seldon, who are now in their 70s, running day-to-day operations.
Dinosaur Land has changed little since its establishment. Wacky American roadside operations, like North Hudson's Frontier Town in New York and Florida's Weeki Wachee Springs and Parrot Jungle,all had their heydays in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, when families were more inclined to pass the time on the highway playing the Alphabet Game or I Spy or indulging in singalongs. Roadside attractions were a welcome diversion. Considering that most of them have gone the way of the dinosaurs, perhaps the real wonder of Dinosaur Land is that it still exists.
The park's signs encourage a hands-off environment, advising children, “please do not climb on the animals.” But that doesn't keep them from coming. Last year's head count, according to Leight, was their largest yet, at more than 50 000.
“It’s a good, cheap place,” Leight says. “Stay for an hour or an hour and a half, whatever, and it only costs them $5 (about R60) a head for kids. There are not very many places that you can go and spend that little bit of money.”
It's also a kind of place parents can bring kids who are too young to be bored or unimpressed. Or perhaps it's an ideal date spot for ironic hipsters.
Secluded from real-world interference by tall trees and buzzing cicadas, the verdant, primal atmosphere can almost transport you to a prehistoric time, where T. rexand triceratops coexisted, albeit acrimoniously.
As we walk the nearly three-acre fenced lot via a winding, pine-needle path, we notice a mishmash of creatures that aren't dinosaurs: a king cobra, a 60-foot-long shark and a bright green, human-size praying mantis.
Seldon and Leight's mother was “scared to death” of the real-life insect, Seldon recalled. Geraci bought it anyway. “And she did not like it one bit.”
I was getting nostalgic as we walked through the prehistoric forest and heard children laugh, cheer and occasionally gasp. It was clear that they weren't bothered by the outdated appearance or lack of prehistoric precision.
“They don't have to be entertained,” Leight said. “There's nothing they have to push, there's nothing they have to touch. It's all just imagination here.”
But imagination doesn't take care of everything. The dinosaurs are weathered with age, patches of the diatryma bird's brown fur have fallen out, multiple animals have cobwebs in their mouths, and some are missing paint and easily grabbed toes or claws. The saber-toothed tiger is missing a tooth.
Geraci called his creation “the educational prehistoric forest,” though the informational signs that adorn the creatures' pens are sometimes more whimsical than factual, varying in degrees of accuracy that reflect his personality. The infamous T. rex is deemed “the Tyrant King of the Dinosaurs.” A store booklet also claims the brontosaurus had “two brains, one in her head and one in her hip,” and the yaleosaurus's description asserts that he, “like most humans,” was “not choosy about his diet,” eating both vegetation and meat.
“The kids are so intelligent,” Seldon said. “They look at the signs and say, 'Well, I don't know if that's really right or not.' “
If you are focusing too closely on accuracy and authenticity, though, you are missing the point of Dinosaur Land.
Tabitha Lee, 30, of Winchester , Virginia, told me it was her first time visiting since she was in kindergarten: “I remember having the same reaction and thinking, Wow, they're huge!” Even after 25 years, the park still hadn't lost its unpretentious charm.
She had brought her son Scutter, five, to visit for the first time. “He reads the books over and over and over again,” she said as he rushed from site to site.
My mom leaned in and whispered to me, “You were just like him.” As Scutter rattled off facts, identifying and describing each of the dinosaurs, it reminded me of my own childhood enchantment.
Max Kaplan, a New York resident road-tripping with his girlfriend, felt a similar reminiscence. “When I think of dinosaurs, I think of my childhood,” he said. “It's not even nostalgia for another era, really. It's nostalgia for my childhood.”
When my mother and I finished our tour, we hopped onto King Kong's palm and snapped a photo. On the journey back, I texted it to my father: “How's this for our next Christmas card?”
As we headed back to Washington, I looked in the rearview mirror and smiled. The blast from the past was heartwarming, but also a little bittersweet. As the dinosaurs faded from sight, I realised I could no longer see them in quite the same light I had when I was a kid. But in Dinosaur Land, I could be reminded of the way the Earth once was — sort of — and how I once was, too.
Megan McDonough, Washington Post