Jurassic Weekend

The first dinosaur activity of the weekend was watching the first Jurassic Park movie. The movie gets better every time I see it. What a classic! We watched it at Marie and Ben's house on their fairly large TV. Marie was also lovely enough to make BLTs for everyone, and the rest of us contributed snacks and drinks. It's always nice getting together with our big group of friends. 

Brontosaurus statue

Saturday was our big dino day. Maria and Matthew and Marie and Ben and Gianni and I went to a dinosaur museum and park in Goseong right on the southern coast. Sian and Thomas needed a bit of a break from travel since they haven't really had once since Sian's mom was here. In order to get to Goseong, we had to take a bus from the bus terminal that Gianni and I live near. It was a nice change not to have to go to a bus station far away for once. We got there early and bought the tickets for everyone. When they all arrived, we still had some time, so we went to Dunkin Donuts for some breakfast. It was only after we went back into the station to get on the bus that we realized we could have bought tickets directly to the Samcheonpo station where we needed to go. Matthew looked it up before, and the bus website said we had to go to Jinju and transfer to Samcheonpo. Complete lies. We could have gone directly to Samcheonpo. Unfortunately, by the time we realized, the bus to Samcheonpo had already left. Oh well. The trip, even with the transfer, didn't really take that long. We got to Samcheonpo about 3 hours later, and

trick eye photo zone

 from there we took a city bus for about a half hour to the dinosaur park in Goseong. I was immediately impressed by the realistic dinosaur statues right outside the entrance to the museum.  There was a triceratops and a t-rex as well as one quite gory statue of a dinosaur being attacked by a bunch of smaller dinosaurs. The museum is built onto a hill, so the views of the ocean would have been really great, but the weather was kind of foggy and ridiculously muggy. It did clear up later in the day though. We had all packed a lunch but hadn't eaten yet, so we enjoyed our meals on some steps in front of a tiled sculpture of a brontosaurus. It was massive. After lunch, we headed into the 4-story museum building, and the entrance fee was really cheap. There were exhibits of various dinosaur bones and other fossils. Other exhibits detailed the formation of the real dinosaur

Dino Bones

footprints outside that we would see later. I really enjoyed seeing the bones of a pterodactyl hanging from the ceiling at the center of the museum. It was amazing just to see their wingspan. On the bottom floor, there was a t-rex head that you had to step inside to see one of the exhibits, so that was pretty fun for pictures. I didn't realize that t-rexs had a muscle layer, like a cheek, at the back of their jaws to help their mouths open wider. I don't actually remember studying dinosaurs in school at all. I know we learned about the periods of the world, but I think that's as far as we got. The top floor of the museum had

dinosaur prints in a path

dino prints with defined toes

a trick eye photo zone that we had some fun with. Before heading outside, we stopped to watch a short and rather cheesy 3D movie about dinosaurs. It was all in Korean, but we got the idea. A kid goes back in time accidentally and interacts with the dinosaurs. Outside the museum, there was a large park with all kinds of realistic dinosaur sculptures to take pictures with as well as a small hedge maze. The big draw of the museum is really the dinosaur footprints that you can see as you walk along a cliffside path during low tides. Some of the footprints did have distinct toe shapes, but others you might not recognize as dinosaur prints unless you were looking for them. They were mostly just circular-shaped tracks made in a walking pattern. But it is really cool to know that you are standing where actual dinosaurs stood. I've never seen anything real like that

bridge with dinosaur outline

view from the museum on the hill

outside in nature. The walk along the coast was really beautiful, and there was also a small cave that you could go inside. At one part along the path, there was a bridge with dinosaur outlines at either end. It wasn't a terribly long walk, although the distance was made worse by the fact that it was just so humid. It felt like it was the most I'd ever sweat in my whole life. We got back up to the museum in time to take the city bus back to Samcheonpo. While we waited for it, Maria and I decided to go on the roller slide that they have from the museum entrance to the parking lot. Unfortunately, no one had gone on the slide in a while, and a few of the wild berries that grew on the bushes above the slide had fallen onto the slide. Maria went right over them, but I noticed and tried to stand on my feet before I hit them. She got the bulk of the berry juice on her butt, and I got a little as well. We were both able to clean most of it off with

riding the roller slide

stain remover when we got home, but it had me worried for a while. Still, the slide was fun and everyone else went down it after. When we got to the Samcheonpo Station, we booked bus tickets back directly to Daegu this time. Although the Jinju route wasn't really that much longer, it was a bit longer. The problem is that there are more buses from Jinju to Samcheonpo throughout the day than there are from there to Daegu. We got home at around 8 or 9 and had some time to relax that evening. We were all much happier with being home that night. Originally, we planned to stay in Samcheonpo and go to the beach on Sunday before heading back. But with the weather not being very nice, we did it as a day trip instead. 

And finally on Sunday night, we all got together to see Jurassic World. Gianni didn't think it was going to be a good movie at all, but I had high hopes that it would be at least fun to watch. Plus, who doesn't want to watch Chris Pratt for two hours? Although I did find some of the dialogue cheesy at times, I did enjoy the movie. I wish they could have used more animatronic dinosaurs, like they did in the old movie. They always look way better than CGI. I don't feel like writing a whole movie review or anything, but it won't be the classic that Jurassic Park still is. It makes you want to go to an amusement park with dinosaurs even though you know that actually creating dinosaurs would be a really bad idea.

We both had a really fun Jurassic Weekend!