Visiting Jurustic Park

While Grandma Kathy was visiting, we toured some unique local gems, including Foxfire Gardens (the hosta gardens that Ms. Crazy Preschooler wore her flower girl dress to) and Jurustic Park. Not Jurassic Park. Jurustic Park. A place unlike any other . . . anywhere.

Jurustic Park is a private park owned by a local artist who recycles rusty metal machinery parts into fantastical creatures that “were discovered in the local marsh.” The artist has a tremendous sense of humor and one of the most unusual personalities I’ve ever met. Sometimes his work is off-color just a bit, but even then it seems wholesome to me because it is so incredibly imaginative. He reminds me much of a scholarly version of Henry Leuhr, a local resident (now passed away) of my hometown who constructed an 8 story pagoda on the edge of a town with six streets and less than 100 people. The pagoda was made out of an old elevator, the strangest sight for miles. (Later on he built a gigantic Hereford Bull with a conference room in its stomach. You crawled up a series of steps to get to the meeting place). But that’s a whole different tangent. Anyway, the artist who created Jurustic park is definitely an eccentric.

The creatures come in all sizes and forms . . . dragons, dinosaurs, frogs, turtles, fish, cats, dogs, and monsters that are beyond description. Because I was chasing three kids (we had an extra that day) I didn’t get many pictures, and actually none of them were of the most fantastic exhibits, but this gives you a bit of the flavor, at least.