The Home
It was a wonderful day to take the family to one of our favorite places of all time, Frank and Erma’s Dinosaur Park, off route eighty nine. The kids were excited, with our youngest on her way to experiencing the park for the first time; keeping up, too, with her older brother and sister, singing road songs. A perfect day for us.
We made the usual stops along the way; the ice cream palace, for example. The best anywhere! Since it was quite a long ride, we’d always stop at the Smuckeys, located about halfway to the park; not the best place to eat, but along the way.
We’d brought a photo album that had pictures from prior trips. The kids liked looking at the pictures on the way, repeating the names of the dinosaurs and getting increasingly hyped about visiting the park, as the miles left to go decreased.
When we were about three quarters of the way to the park, traffic was tied up and moving slowly. The kids got restless. Then, the traffic stopped completely, and after about twenty five minutes of sitting still had gone by, the vehicles thankfully began to move again.
Finally we reached the park, or at least we thought we did. There were no lines of cars backed up, where there should have been. I wasn’t even sure if it was further up the road and my bearings were off, as I couldn’t find the entrance. I kept going, then turned around.
I stopped at a convenience store, empty except for the middle-aged lady behind the counter; when I asked, she said she was a new resident. She’d not heard of the park before, and by this time, I was beginning to suspect something must have happened.
But then a guy came out who’d overheard. “Dinosaur park went outta business about a couple of years ago, after they sold the place.”
“What is it now?” I asked; “They sold out and now it’s an old-folks home,” he said. He went on, saying, “They built the home on part of the land, and some of the dinosaur statues and things still remain.” I thanked him, got back in the car and then drove down the road to where I thought the entrance was, and then I saw it.
The old folks’ home was big and took up a lot of space; I couldn’t imagine where any dinosaurs would be. I tried to remember where the entrance had been. It was so different now, and without a landmark where I could get my bearings, I was lost.
Just then I saw “Willie the Welcomer.” He was still standing there, behind a metal picket fence. Near rocks. The kids were so disappointed; Andy wanted to go and see Willie up close, but it didn’t look too easy getting back there, and his mother feared snakes.
Sadness.
I tried to cheer them up; I lied about a new dinosaur park coming soon.
The Home © free-reign 2020
27, 30, 5, 14, 3, 29, 11, 31, 19, 4, 24, 12, 13, 22, 6, 25, 20, 8, 16, 17, 23, 26, 21, 9, 18, 7, 10, 2, 28, 1, 15
This is my entry to The 31 Sentence Contest Round 20 by 
Thanks for reading!
Sources for images used in this post:
(Public Domain photos are from Wikimedia Commons)
Dinosaur Park: Image by FabSubeject / CC BY-SA
Ice Cream Stand: Image by Ron Porter from Pixabay
Convenience Store: Image by Smarty9108 / CC BY-SA
Contest Prompt: Image by
