Goseong-gun "The Land of Dinosaur"

With the Larsens still in town, we opted to visit Goseong-gun (or as the website calls it "The Land of Dinosaur.") Yes that would be in the singular. Though in another part of the website it is called "The Land of Dinosaurs."

Goseong is about two hours from Busan, on the southern coast. It is an area that claims to be the site of many fossilized dinosaur footprints. It was also the host this year of the World Dinosaur Expo, which I think is the part we actually attended. I say I think because as we drove through Goseong there appeared to be 3-4 sites we could visit. Following the most colorful, obvious signs landed us outside the gate for this portion of the expo. The plethora of tour buses parked out front made us think we were in the right place.

Owing much to our very, very late start, we arrived just in time to watch streams of field trip children exiting the park. Fabulous timing, in my opinion. We also arrived just in time for the tail end of the dinosaur parade, which I am so sad to say I did not get a single picture of. Parades like these are a must here at any large amusement type event. They are a low budget version of any Disneyland parade, with the addition here of large stuffed dinosaurs and Eastern European dancers in scantily clad clothing. The music was incredibly loud and the kids thought they were in heaven dancing along. 

From there we moved onto the most inedible food court I have ever eaten at. We hit the International tent hoping for a serving of chicken strips for our hungry brood. International appeared to mean Korean sold under the flag of a neighboring country (Japan, Korea, India). The food itself was pretty dreadful, we didn't even try to enforce trying a bite (for the kids or myself). The kids proved subsistence on "dino bread" was entirely possible and enjoyable. 

We finally started wandering around the Expo. We enjoyed a large display of to-scale dinosaur skeletons. Emily was in heaven seeing the size of the long-neck (her personal favorite). The grounds were littered with large life-like dinosaurs the kids loved climbing all over.

The exhibit was also filled with many florescent, friendly, bow-wearing, cartoon-esque dinosaurs. My girls tended to gravitate towards said dinosaurs. 

Just in case you ever wondered how they keep these fields of flowers watered.

So ferocious!

Emily was in heaven. A longneck. A PINK longneck.

It was considerably hotter than it had been in Busan. . . hence Hannah's style.

After winding our way through info tents, dinosaur bone tents, and the aforementioned life size dinosaurs we made our way up the hill to a large hall with the 4-D dinosaur movie and the animatronic displays. Opting to skip what looked to be a nightmare inducing movie of a young boy being chased by 4-D dinosaurs, we stumbled into the animatronic hall. The t-rex immediately swung around in full roar mode. I'm pretty sure Hannah was a stone throw away from wetting her pants. After a recovery period she stayed glued to my side through the remainder of the life like dinosaurs. 

Upon exiting the hall we were lucky to discover a long roller slide leading down a hillside. The sign professed the slide to be the longest in Korea. With the girls excited to check it out, we all piled on for what would prove to be a bit of an uncomfortable ride. Has anyone actually been on one of these roller slides in their adult lifetime? With only one quarter of the slide behind me I quickly realized my entire backside was beginning to itch. And burn. Bad. Thank you friction. I had never been so excited to exit a slide in my entire life. .  .

The Larsens, burning backsides and all.

The slide dropped us on an empty sandy beach which we decided to check out. We were quite surprised to find, docked right off shore, a large decommissioned Korean air US Navy ship. It was completely open for people to tour and explore. We wound our way through the underbelly of the boat, feeling so happy to have a home on land and a kitchen that did not resemble a nasty cafeteria kitchen.

Family shot on the deck.

Captain Emily

Navigator Penelope

Hannah "driving" the boat.

Emily and Eli checking out said random boat from the shore.

One of the few, few couple pictures since kids entered our lives. Thanks Will!

Someday babies will rule the world.

The Allen-Larsen crew. In age order (not seated order, but you should be able to figure out who is who) you have Emily (5), Eli (4), Hannah (3), Penelope (2), Madeline (1) and Lucia (11.99 months). Quite an impressive span there! One child for each year both couples have been married! 

Apparently my children were hatched from eggs.

All in all it was a fun day, albeit a bit random. The exhibit was well done, the kids had fun and really that was all the mattered. I later told Tyler it was like they set up the exhibit, saw the empty hillside and decided to build a slide. Slide built they realized it dropped you near the beach. What an empty beach someone thought. How cool to put a navy ship here. Bam. Done. It was like several different experiences all rolled into one! The best of the day was the drive home with a van full of sleeping kids, sipping on a Korean vanilla milkshake in a bag.