If you consider that a fair trade-off, then I highly recommend paying a visit to Glen Rose and spending a day or two out from in front of the computer. There's plenty to do in this 1500-acre National Natural Landmark: hiking, biking, camping, wildlife viewing, fishing, swimming. And, of course, there are the dinosaurs.

Naturally, don't expect to find real dinosaurs roaming around the place. (Believe me, with some of the e-mail I receive, that's a point worth making.) If you're looking for living creatures, head on over to the nearby Fossil Rim Wildlife Center to see llamas and rhinos and zebras (oh my). But, if you're still interested in those terrible lizards of yore, Dinosaur Valley's the place to be.

Here you can see, up close, actual fossilized footprints left by dinosaurs some 110 million years ago when this area of Texas bordered a shallow sea. The tracks were uncovered by the formation of the Paluxy River and were further excavated by paleontologists in the 1930s. The tracks have been identified as being those left by a theropod (probably Acrocanthosaurus, a 20-to-30-foot-long carnosaur) and a sauropod (most likely Pleurocoelus, a 30-to-50-foot-long plant eater — probably the last vegetarian to live in Texas). In fact, the sauropod tracks found here were the first of their kind to be recognized.

Unfortunately, some of the best specimens were completely removed in the '30s and transported to a museum. They composed a long stretch of tracks that represented the moment of attack by a meat eater on one of the veggiesaurs. It is now in the hands of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

But, to make up for it, the park boasts two life-size models of a T-Rex and an apatosaur that, interestingly enough, we took from New York. They were originally part of the beloved Sinclair Oil Dinoland exhibit at the 1964-65 New York World's Fair and were designed and constructed by renowned wildlife sculptor Louis Paul Jonas.

Jonas was commissioned by Sinclair Oil to build nine such dinosaurs for the fair, a task that took three years to accomplish. Employing a team of paleontologists, engineers and robotics experts, the models were considered to be the most accurate dinosaur representations built to date. It was Jonas's dream to complete such a project and when finished, he was heard to remark, "If I never do another job, I shall be fulfilled."

Upon their completion, the dinosaurs were floated to the fair down the Hudson River on a barge, a much publicized event and quite a surreal spectacle even to those who were expecting it. They were one of the most popular attractions at the fair and continued to delight dinosaur lovers even after the event ended. The creatures were loaded onto flatbed trucks and roamed the country in a national tour.

In a 1998 e-mail interview, David Merritt, grandson of Louis Paul Jonas and current president of the Louis Paul Jonas Studios, offered this about the T-Rex now at Dinosaur Valley:

It is the only Rex that Jonas sculpted. Being the original casting for the fair, it has weathered a bit and lost some of its detail...after all it's about 35 years old.

He also commented on the animatronics that once existed in both models:

The animatronics were crude but advanced for the times. The apatosaurus had a moving neck and the T-Rex a moving jaw. After the fair, Sinclair shipped them back to the studio in preparation for [the] national tour. Jonas removed the animatronics and prepared a fixed neck and jaw to ease maintenance on the road.

After the tour, the models were offered to the Smithsonian Institution, but were turned down. So, the family was split up and individual dinos were given foster homes across the country. The T-Rex and apatosaur were the only two siblings to stay together, donated to Dinosaur Valley in 1970.

In 1987, the apatosaur's head was redesigned to reflect current scientific knowledge. The beast had originally been designed as a brontosaur, which, according to a nearby billboard, never existed. It was just an apatosaur skeleton confused in the 1880s with the wrong skull, a mistake not corrected until the 1970s. When the cranial correction was made to the model, however, it just plain didn't look right with the old neck. So, in 1995, it was switched back again, both for esthetic purposes and because the Sinclair dinosaurs had come to be recognized as historic artifacts in their own right.

Incidentally, more-scientific sources explain that the bronto/apato naming issue isn't related to the skull mix-up, but to a disagreement in specimen classification. In short, Brontosaurus may still be correct, depending on whose classification you agree with. But this isn't a scientific journal, so you can look up the details for yourself.

Getting back to the models, their presence has made the park a favorite field-trip destination of mine since I was a kid. Back in the day, the dinos were still valued highly enough to warrant a tall chain-link fence. Today, lucky for us, visitors can get nearly close enough to rub their bellies. I mean, if you wanted to do such a thing.

So, if you're looking for a great day out, rich with both ancient and recent history, Dinosaur Valley's got you covered. And unlike Jurassic Park, recurring visitations won't suck.