A summer road trip is one of the best ways to appreciate the beauty of our great nation. Long drives down lost highways offer snapshots of the ever-changing landscape—the vast Pine Barrens of New Jersey, the dreary bays of the Maryland coast, and the rolling Appalachian foothills all colored my most recent excursion, an outing to Natural Bridge, Virginia. But on this adventure, I was seeking neither Natural Bridge’s awe-inspiring titular stone bridge, nor its babbling creeks and expansive caverns. I had set my sights higher, on the most majestic of attractions: Dinosaur Kingdom.
Dinosaur Kingdom is an outdoor park in the woods of southern Virginia where life-sized, plaster replicas of Civil War soldiers are portrayed engaging in mortal combat with life-sized, plaster replicas of dinosaurs. Take a moment. Read that again. Civil War soldiers vs. motherfucking dinosaurs.
Now, I hear your cries. “Why would I, a productive member of society want to visit a theme park where dinosaurs and Civil War soldiers forever fight to the death?” you ask. Because it is fantastic. If you still require help in suspending your disbelief, the park was so kind as to provide a back-story. In the war-torn south of 1863, a family of Southern archaeologists stumbled upon a valley where dinosaurs still roamed free. Unfortunately, those damn Yankees have also discovered the valley and attempted to harness these dinosaurs to use them as, I kid you not, “weapons of mass destruction.”
In what I can only assume is the result of some lingering Southern resentment, all of the Yankees appear horribly deformed. The first boy in blue, for example, has a face like a constipated demon. Although admittedly, it could have been to emphasize the exertion necessary in keeping two raging dilophosauri at bay.
Some of the models were downright silly, and intentionally so, which I feel was a great detriment to the integrity of the park. For example, one scene showed a hungry pack of raptors circling some fearful woodland critters. In attempt to thwart the raptors, or perhaps scare them off, the critters had stacked on top of one another—from top down: mouse, bunny, deer, cow. This is a load of bull.
Everyone knows how clever raptors are, and that they would never fall for such a ruse.
While the raging T-Rex ripping a Union soldier off of his horse was thrilling, what stays with me most was our celebrity sighting in the park. As we turned a corner, I found myself face to face with President Abraham Lincoln, a large raptor close behind him. There he was, the Great Emancipator himself, being stalked by some of the most vicious hunters this world has ever seen—and he harbored no hatred for them. Standing there in the woods, I wiped a solitary tear from my eye and said a silent prayer. God bless the USA.
