EAST TENNESSEE DINOSAURS
A key to good road trip stops is that you don’t have to go somewhere totally fresh and new to experience something entirely unhinged. Take a drive you do a lot, and look, I mean really look at what is between point A and point B of a drive you’ve done a thousand times.
For me, that drive is from my hometown of Asheville to my mom’s town in West Virginia. I’ve done that drive too many times to even begin to count so it’s easy to click my brain off for four hours and get it done.
A few years back I decided to take a look to see what I had been missing out on for all these years. Like, if I were taking this drive for the first time, what would I want to see? If I had never seen these cities and landscapes along the way, what would stand out to me? Also I had time to kill so who cares if I saunter off into the woods for a bit?
This led me just a short distance off my usual route and into an expansive dinosaur forest in a residential area in Bluff City, Tennessee. Backyard Terrors is the brain child of a man who simply just loves dinosaurs and wanted one for himself. He started by building one in 2007, and since it seemed to draw a crowd, he rightfully decided to make it a total thing.
As of my visit in 2018, there were 40 dinosaurs. They’re all along an easy walking path, and even trails off into a longer circle in the woods. There’s even a set up for “fossil digging” for easy kid amusement, and an animatronic velociraptor path. As far as I’m concerned, those are all the main ingredients to the best roadtrip fever dream you could ever wish for.
The Dinosaur Park is totally free and runs on donations. If you enjoy it, donate. It goes to park improvements and additional dinosaurs which is a pretty damn good cause if you ask me. There’s a park shop as well that plays the Jurassic Park theme on speakers, which I’m not gonna lie…it made me tear up a little due to the fact I’m not well.
So next time you’re driving through East Tennessee, add this to your agenda. I know I’m about to take a closer look at all my usual routes and see what other pleasant surprises await. I vote we all do the same and keep this weird culture alive and thriving.
