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Yemo, CA – Peggy Sue’s Classic 50 Diner

by Dan Avidan | May 12, 2025 | Yemo, CA | 0 Comments

Surprisingly, this is the 2nd diner-related entry to this website that I’ve added recently. Who knew “diner-saurs” were a thing? Along the highway between Los Angeles and Las Vegas is Peggy Sue’s classic 50 Diner, complete with jukeboxes, soda fountains,...

Lancaster, PA – North Museum of Nature & Science

by Dan Avidan | May 12, 2025 | Lancaster, PA | 0 Comments

I love smaller museums like the North Museum of Nature and Science. You can tell that they were labors of love to build, and almost all of them were created as gifts of kindness from small groups of dedicated people, or in this case, one single person. Lancaster...

Bloomfield Hills, MI – Cranbrook Institute of Science

by Dan Avidan | May 12, 2025 | Bloomfield Hills, MI | 0 Comments

About half an hour outside of Detroit you can find the Cranbrook Institute of Science, which is a great little museum off the beaten path in Bloomfield Hills. It reminds me a lot of one of my favorites childhood haunts in New Jersey: the Morris Museum. They’re both...

Stegosauras – Wall, NJ – The Roadside Diner

by Dan Avidan | May 12, 2025 | Wall, NJ | 0 Comments

Just off Route 33 in my home state of New Jersey is a tiny restaurant called The Roadside Diner. The tri-state area used to be covered in places like this in the 50s, and a lot of them still existed when I was a little kid. Sadly many shut down over the years and...

New Haven, CT – Yale Peabody Museum

by Dan Avidan | May 12, 2025 | New Haven, CT | 0 Comments

Here’s an indication of how long this dinosaur quest has been going on: Five years ago, I visited the Yale Peabody Museum in Connecticut and saw their fantastic (but outdated) dinosaur displays firsthand. The Peabody is famous for housing some of the first...

Cabazon, CA – Mr. Rex’s Dinosaur Adventure

by Dan Avidan | November 12, 2024 | Cabazon, CA | 0 Comments

Any child of the 80s will remember the giant Cabazon Dinosaurs from Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. In an iconic scene, Pee Wee talks about life and dreams with his friend Simone inside the jaws of a huge T-Rex sculpture, and later runs for his life from her enraged...

Denver, CO -Denver Museum of Nature and Science (Baby edition – Part 2!)

by Dan Avidan | November 12, 2024 | Denver, CO | 0 Comments

I had some unfinished business to take care of at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The first time I went there years ago, I got pictures with the big Stegosaurus and one of the babies. (Which you can see in earlier entries on this site.) At the time I was...

Seattle, WA – Pacific Science Center

by Dan Avidan | November 12, 2024 | Seattle, WA | 0 Comments

In 1962, as part of the Seattle World’s Fair, a beautiful new building was designed by Minoru Yamasaki, who later went on to create the original World Trade Center in New York. This landmark Seattle building became known as the Pacific Science Center, and features a...

Anchorage, AK – Alaska Museum of Science and Nature

by Dan Avidan | November 12, 2024 | Anchorage, AK | 0 Comments

This past year gave me a chance to tour parts of the world I’d never seen before. It was so thrilling to see unique places like Malmo, Sweden and Helsinki, Finland…while back on American soil, I got to visit Anchorage, Alaska for the first time. Our show the night...

Bluff Creek, TN – Backyard Terrors Dinosaur Park

by Dan Avidan | November 12, 2024 | Bluff Creek, TN | 0 Comments

I was recently in Nashville, Tennessee recording the new Shadow Academy album. On my day off, I drove a few hours out to Bluff Creek to see Backyard Terrors, a wild dinosaur sculpture park that one determined man built in the forest behind his house. What a legend! ...

Mesa, AZ – Arizona Museum of Science

by Dan Avidan | September 18, 2024 | Mesa, AZ | 0 Comments

While on tour in Phoenix, I had the opportunity to stop by the hugely underrated Arizona Museum of Science in Mesa. I had never even heard of this museum, but decided to check it out on a whim. Much to my delight I found that they had a Stegosaurus skull, plate, and...

Santa Monica, CA – Santa Monica Third Street Promenade

by Dan Avidan | September 11, 2024 | Santa Monica, CA | 0 Comments

Another great artists rendering of dinosaurs near Los Angeles can be found at the Third Street Promenade on the West end of Santa Monica. Featuring six different dinosaurs, these topiary fountains were commissioned in 1989 and were the winners of an art contest held...

Beverly Hills, CA – Mr. Brainwash Art Museum

by Dan Avidan | September 4, 2024 | Beverly Hills, CA | 0 Comments

This recent series of visiting artistic representations of Stegosaurus brought me to the Mr. Brainwash Art Museum in the Beverly Hills section of my adopted home city, Los Angeles. Mr. Brainwash is a French-born street artist whose art is all over the map when it...

Toronto, CANADA – Rusty Metal Dinosaurs Garden

by Dan Avidan | August 28, 2024 | Toronto, Canada | 0 Comments

At the corner of Rockford Blvd. and Lawrence Avenue East in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, sits a small patch of land with a really unique art display. In 2013 the AC Waterjet company wanted to come up with an interesting way to promote their new laser...

Philadelphia, PA – The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University

by Dan Avidan | August 21, 2024 | Uncategorized | 0 Comments

The Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia played a huge role in our early understanding of dinosaurs. It was one of the home bases of Edward Drinker Cope who, along with Othniel Marsh, was the preeminent expert on fossils during the turn of the 20th century. ...

Ithaca, NY – Ithaca’s Museum of the Earth

by Dan Avidan | May 9, 2024 | Ithaca, NY | 0 Comments

Earlier this year I was recording an NSP album in Toronto and realized I was in striking distance of a famous Stegosaurus sculpture in Ithaca, New York.  So on my day off, I hopped in a rental car and drove a few hours across the border.  It was worth it!  This paper...

Lakewood, CO – Best Western Denver Southwest

by Dan Avidan | April 30, 2024 | Lakewood, CO | 0 Comments

Sometimes you don’t even have to leave the hotel on a dinosaur trip to see something great!  I don’t know how the Best Western in Lakewood got permission from corporate to dino-theme their hotel, but it looks fantastic!  The entire lobby and front lounge is covered...

Hill City, SD – Museum at Black Hills Institute 

by Dan Avidan | April 19, 2024 | Hill City, South Dakota | 0 Comments

Just after Christmas, I had a few days of freedom before I was needed back in Los Angeles for work.  I decided to take a road trip to South Dakota to see some cool dinosaur stuff, as well as Mount Rushmore, which is obviously a big part of America’s history.  (Also,...

Fukui, JAPAN – Fukui Dinosaur Museum

by Dan Avidan | April 11, 2024 | Fukui, Japan | 0 Comments

Deeper into the Japan trip, my friends and I took a bullet train to the small town of Fukui.  Tokyo was not the easiest place to get around, but was cosmopolitan enough that a non-native speaker like myself could figure things out.  Fukui on the other hand was a real...

Tokyo, JAPAN – National Museum of Nature and Science

by Dan Avidan | April 3, 2024 | Tokyo, Japan | 0 Comments

The farthest and most exotic show we played on our last tour was in Tokyo, Japan.  It’s difficult for me to comprehend that we have enough fans in such a far-off land to have warranted a show…but once we were there, my only concern was to turn the trip into as many...

Canberra, AUSTRALIA – National Dinosaur Museum

by Dan Avidan | November 30, 2023 | Uncategorized | 0 Comments

The Australian portion of the dinosaur adventure continued in the national capital city of Canberra.  This town wasn’t near any of the places I was performing on tour, so I had to take a 6-hour side trip to get there and back on the day off between shows.  It was...

Sydney, AUSTRALIA – Australian Museum

by Dan Avidan | November 29, 2023 | Uncategorized | 0 Comments

I recently found a website that allows you to find the opposite point of any location on Earth.  I typed in the name of the small New Jersey town I grew up in, and the response the site gave me was a wilderness point in the Western end of Australia.  That fact was...

Milan, ITALY – Civic Museum of National History

by Dan Avidan | November 28, 2023 | Uncategorized | 0 Comments

This Dinoquest has taken me a lot of places.  Some of the Stegosaurus skeletons I’ve visited are located near each other and can be seen in one trip (Like in the many museums of Utah or the East Coast.)  Others, like this one in Milan, are a journey unto themselves. ...

Savannah, GA – JW Marriott Plant Riverside Savannah

by Dan Avidan | November 22, 2023 | Uncategorized | 0 Comments

Down in the heart of Georgia lies a huge renovation project aiming to raise Savannah’s national profile as a destination city.  Entire blocks are being restored and updated with the hopes of creating a walkable party town like Austin or New Orleans.  One of the crown...

Boulder, CO – Benson Earth Sciences Building – University of Colorado Boulder

by Dan Avidan | November 21, 2023 | Uncategorized | 0 Comments

In my earlier entry from Canon City, I mentioned that the specimen at the Royal Gorge History Center was one of only two casts of “Ms. Spike,” a nearly complete Stegosaurus skeleton that’s become the official state fossil of Colorado.  Here is the other one!  Located...

Moab, UT – Moab Giants

by Dan Avidan | September 14, 2023 | Uncategorized | 0 Comments

While I was driving on a trip through Utah I was surprised to see an amazing field full of life-sized dinosaur statues along highway 191. Needless to say I changed my plans, pulled a U-turn and checked it out. Turns out the place is a huge open-air museum called...

London, England – Natural History Museum (Exhibit 2)

by Dan Avidan | September 8, 2023 | Uncategorized | 0 Comments

Up on a shelf near the ceiling of a winding path in the London Natural History Museum hides this gorgeous skeleton of Stegosaurus’ cousin from the far east: Tuojiangosaurus. As I’ve expanded my quest to include more Stegosaurs besides the most famous American...

Brussels, BELGIUM – Royal Belgium Institute of Natural Sciences

by Dan Avidan | September 6, 2023 | Uncategorized | 0 Comments

Belgium’s largest dinosaur museum is mostly famous for its incredible collection of 30(!) Iguanodon skeletons. They were unearthed together in the 1800s, displayed in a huge glass case, and became one of the lynchpin exhibits that taught both scientists and the...

Albuquerque, NM – New Mexico Museum of Natural History

by Dan Avidan | September 6, 2023 | Uncategorized | 0 Comments

The Stegosaurus at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History is a great one, and I was so happy to check it off my list. I’d first seen pictures of it years ago when a cast of it was loaned to an exhibit in Chiba, Japan. I was pretty relieved to find out the real deal...

Boxtel, NETHERLANDS

Boxtel, NETHERLANDS – Oertijdmuseum

by Dan Avidan | September 6, 2023 | Uncategorized | 0 Comments

2 hours south of Amsterdam lies the beautiful town of Boxtel. It’s surprising that a municipality of only 30,000 people would have one of the nicest dinosaur displays in Europe, but that’s part of the charm of the wonderful Oertijd museum. In addition to a huge,...