Dinosaur World: Cave City, KY

After spending the night in a Wigwam, eating breakfast at a restaurant that still has a smoking section (it was full) and before we explored abandoned Funtown Mountain, there was Dinosaur World. There are three different Dinosaur Worlds, one in Florida, Texas and Kentucky. Cave City, Kentucky is located near Mammoth Cave Park and was obviously once a booming tourist town. There are still motels, gift shops and other attractions, but the whole town feels largely stuck in time.

Unlike Funtown Mountain across the street, Dinosaur World seems to be doing quite well—they're even open every single day except Christmas and Thanksgiving from 8:30am - 6pm. Dinosaur World features more than 150 life-sized dinosaurs set along an outdoor, wooded path. I read a review where someone complained that they weren't animatronic, but it was the low-tech nature of it all that appealed to me most.

I wouldn't consider myself to have an extensive knowledge of all things dinosaur-related, but I was blown away by how many different kinds of dinosaurs have been discovered. It's one thing to read about their different traits and sizes, but it's another thing entirely to see them up close and in person. Dinosaur World also has a "Mammoth Garden," and if there's one extinct species that we should try to resurrect, it should be the Wooly Mammoth.

Some of the dinosaurs looked predictably scary, but others looked so silly that they made me laugh. Nature is such a weird and wonderful thing, and it wasn't hard to draw connections between dinosaurs and modern-day creatures like birds and lizards. We'll probably never know what it's like to share the earth with dinosaurs like the ones we imagine, but a day at Dinosaur World was more than sufficient to quell that urge. And if all of the Jurassic Park movies are to be believed, resurrecting actual dinosaurs is most likely a terrible idea.