Full Dinosaur Quest
Yemo, CA – Peggy Sue’s Classic 50 Diner
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, and a dinosaur “fun park” in the backyard. I had stopped here many years...
Lancaster, PA – North Museum of Nature & Science
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 businessman Hugh North founded this museum in 1953 along with the help of Franklin...
Bloomfield Hills, MI – Cranbrook Institute of Science
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 situated in neighborhoods of nice suburban towns, and both have a cozy woodland...
Stegosauras – Wall, NJ – The Roadside Diner
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 now they are few and far between. Part of their charm was each one’s quirky...
New Haven, CT – Yale Peabody Museum
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quest has been going on: Five years ago, I visited the Yale Peabody Museum in Connecticut and saw their fantastic (but outdated) dinosaur displays firsthand.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 dinosaur bones ever found (by paleontologist Othniel Marsh, who discovered and...