Roadside Attractions American Kitsch at its Best
“It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
A few months ago, this column featured an article about the Great American Road Trip. The piece was primarily focused on old Route 66, which stretches 2,448 miles from Chicago, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California.
I mentioned several of the roadside attractions one could find along this fabled highway. Several readers responded with their own stories of visiting some of these unusual attractions in the U.S., so I decided to write about what a curious traveler might find today out on the open road.
A little over four decades ago, I took my son, Shannon, and nephew, Chris, out west to climb the Grand Teton; both boys were about 15 years old at the time and had some rock-climbing experience, but this would be their first time mountaineering.
We took the northern route, Interstate 90, and once we got west of Chicago, we started seeing large hand-painted signs for a place called Wall Drug. As it happened, Wall Drug was over 300 miles farther down the highway, and we lost count of the innumerable signs at fifty, each successive sign with fewer miles to Wall Drug than the previous one; they seemed endless, but we finally arrived.
I wasn’t much for tourist traps, but the boys begged me to stop, and I relented and am glad that I did. Where else are you going to see a jackalope (an antlered jackrabbit) or get a five-cent cup of coffee? Shannon and Chris would have gladly passed up seeing Mount Rushmore to see those Jackalopes.
Three hours and several T-shirt purchases later, we were back on I-90 heading west. A few miles down the road, we started seeing signs for another roadside attraction: the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota. Fortunately, the boys were sound asleep when we passed the exit to the Corn Palace, and I admit I didn’t wake them.
Wall Drug is one of the most, if not the most, successful just-off-the-highway tourist attractions in the U.S., having begun in the 1930s when it started offering motorists free ice water and five-cent coffee on its 300-plus signs.
Travel author Bill Bryson (A Walk in the Woods, The Lost Continent) wrote this about Wall Drug, “It’s an awful place, one of the world’s worst tourist traps, but I loved it, and I won’t have a word said against it.”
Today, there are an estimated 15,000 roadside attractions in the U.S. The categories of these popular curiosities include World’s Largest, Weirdest, and “You won’t believe your eyes.”
I vividly remember a road trip in Ohio when I was a youngster that included stopping at a roadside attraction called Mystery Hill near Marblehead on Lake Erie. It featured a building where, as the sign claimed, “tennis balls roll uphill.” I wasn’t the brightest crayon in the box, but even I knew that was impossible.
Yes, the tennis balls did roll up the hill in this building, but clearly the edifice was constructed on a slant. Gravity never goes on vacation; however, it was an incredible optical illusion that I have never forgotten in more than 60 years.
I later found out that this type of attraction was a theme for many such tourist traps. There are approximately 35 Mystery Hills, all defying gravity, scattered about the U.S.
Over the years, with many road trips under my belt, I have only visited a handful of roadside attractions, but the one I found to be most intriguing is an art installation in Nebraska called Carhenge, which, with the help of the Big Five Auto Manufacturers, admirably replicates the real Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England.
Where the prehistoric Stonehenge is comprised of massive stones arranged in two circles, Carhenge uses classic cars all painted gray. Carhenge was the brainchild of Jim Reinders, who studied the real Stonehenge in England before assembling his homage to the ancient solar calendar in 1987. I can’t help but wonder what the Neolithic people who built Stonehenge would think of Carhenge.
We’ve all heard the term “Bucket List,” which roughly means the places or experiences one wishes to have in their lifetime. For working people, this usually happens after retirement and is generally motivated by a desire to travel.
I am friends with a couple right here in Pocahontas County, who have spent several years and many miles visiting all the National Parks in the U.S. I don’t know if they actually made a bucket list, but their goal is indeed a worthy one.
Enter Larry and Jeannie Simonetti, an Akron, Ohio, a couple who are intrepid travelers and have a penchant for discovering those special, often unknown places scattered across our country.
Larry and I are former colleagues and have been good friends for more than 50 years. In his earlier days, Larry’s travels included many backcountry canoe and hiking trips. Now retired for a couple of decades from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Larry and Jeannie travel regularly, including to far-flung locations such as Alaska.
After reading my article on the Great American Road Trip, Larry started sharing some of his experiences on the road. Talk about a bucket list: Larry and Jeannie have decided to visit all the “World’s Largest” attractions from the lower 48 to the Last Frontier, Alaska. It’s an ambitious undertaking, but they have the drive and travel experience to pull it off.
Larry and Jeannie are also foodies, as am I, and they look for those little cafés and restaurants that offer unusual cuisine; places one must travel out of the way for. Larry discusses a couple of quirky eateries they visited on one of their many road trips.
“While in Des Moines, Iowa, we went to Fong’s Pizza, where you can get a Korean beef and kimchi or a General Tso’s pizza,” said Larry, adding,” In southern Alabama, we found an out-of-the-way single-item restaurant called Bates House of Turkey where the only thing on the menu is turkey dinner, turkey club, turkey wrap, taco turkey salad, etc.”
Jeannie weighed in with, “There are so many fun places we’ve stopped at on our trips, including the last one where we painted Tom Sawyer’s fence in Hannibal, Missouri. Once, coming back from Des Moines, we took a 20-mile detour to see the American Gothic House, the site of Grant Wood’s famous painting depicting a farmer, pitchfork in hand, and his wife standing in front of a Gothic Farmhouse. Unfortunately for us, the museum was closed, but we did get to take a picture of ourselves standing in front of the house sans the pitchfork.”
The Simonettis have found that you have to get off the interstates and explore the “blue highways,” the secondary roads depicted in blue ink on the old highway maps. “That’s where the fun begins,” says Larry.
Regarding the Simonettis’ plans to visit as many “World’s Largest” attractions, Larry says, “On a trip to Alaska, we started doing the ‘world’s largest’ stops, and now it’s just part of any vacation we take. If there’s a world’s largest anywhere close, we make sure we stop.
‘If you’re ever driving through central Illinois, make sure you stop in Casey. The town is in the middle of nowhere, but it prides itself on having more than a dozen of the world’s largest. There, you’ll find everything from a mailbox to a bird cage to a pencil and other crazy stuff. I don’t know who decides something is the world’s largest, but it makes for a fun road trip.”
Well, Jeannie and Larry, if you plan to see all of the World’s Largest items, you’ll have to visit Chester, West Virginia, where we proudly have the largest teapot in the world, quite possibly, the universe.
“Boredom lies only with the traveler’s limited perception and his failure to explore deeply enough.”
William Least Heat Moon, “Blue Highways.”
Happy Traveling,
Ken Springer
ken1949bongo@gmail.com
