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Exhibit A: Dinosaur State Park in Rocky Hill, Connecticut. It’s about 20 minutes from where I grew up — and these days on the required visitation list each time we make a trip to visit the grandparents.

If you’re thinking, “I didn’t think that there had been so many dinosaur fossils excavated in southern New England,” you would be correct. In fact, not a single “bone” was discovered at this site. The resource being protected in situ by the geodesic dome is actually a large trackway of fossilized footprints.

The first time we took a newly-three-year-old Big Brother, I wasn’t sure what he’d make of this less traditional take on dinosaurs. He definitely loved seeing the more “traditional” mounted skeletons, but walking on a bridge over the footprints is a very different, and more abstract, experience.

I was pleasantly surprised that he loved it. The small scale of the space and relative lack of crowds made him feel very comfortable. For a kid used to the mobs at the Smithsonian, it felt like a private museum just for him. The vintage dioramas and miniatures (absolutely untouched despite the passage of decades) charmed him and did a better job visually explaining how the footprints had been left behind than I was able to do myself.

I loved that when there he uses his imagination while learning. He makes up stories about the tiny dinosaurs in the displays. He loves to narrate where he thinks the dinosaurs that left the tracks were going. Since many animals crisscrossed the area, the tracks are jumbled in places, which has been someone getting lost, or having a dance party. Actually, we taught him the word “speculate” to go along with the fanciful tellings. He also really liked the idea that we have no idea exactly what kind of dinosaur made the prints, because a good mystery makes anything cooler.

The attached exhibit center is also a great way to spend some time. There are dinosaur toys and books, coloring sheets and puzzles. But there's also a great interactive display on the geological history of New England. I’ve absorbed a goodly amount about local rock formations, while he’s absorbed playing with the container of shimmery mica flakes. The universal favorite, however, are the tables with magnifying glasses and a variety of small fossils to examine — a leaf, a trilobite, a shark tooth and the like.

Outside the building is a whole additional world to explore — an arboretum and woodland nature trail oasis. Each individual trail is fairly short, so little legs can manage them on their own, but it’s easily possible to while away an afternoon by combining them into a circuit. In nice weather, you can make a plaster cast of a fossilized footprint.

If you happen to be in central Connecticut in mid-August, check the calendar for the family festival that celebrates the accidental unearthing of the tracks in 1966. A bulldozer operator spotted what turned out to be 2,000 footprints while preparing to build a new state office building. The facility moved and the park opened two years later with about 500 prints on display. The annual part includes face painting, kid crafts and a variety of dinosaur-themed games.

Final Verdict: Try revisiting the places you were taken on school field trips as a child. They were chosen for a reason, and you may even find yourself appreciating something new through adult eyes.