ruby falls and rock city are msut sees. stop by them every year on my way to florida...toss in the corvet museum as well
if you are ever in wisconson go to the house on teh rock.
Holy Shit, 'gator. You mean you have actually set foot in "South of the Border"? :o)
That place is the fucking "Three Mile Island" of tourist Kitsch!
It is radioactive, with all that is wrong with 'murka. :o)
I couldn't be more shocked if you'd said that the hottest beau you ever had was Paul Wolfowitz. :o)
There are so many op-art renditions of "Pedro" the grinning Mexican, beckoning unsuspecting tourons to their sensory doom, that I avert my eyes when I drive past it. :o)
Plus, my friends who live in that area of South Carolina tell me they've never seen any appreciable number of cars parked in the parking lots...which makes me wonder if it's not some kind of VERY efficient and long-running money-laundering project for the Medillin cartel. :o)
Gaaaaah! South of the Border; I'm going to stop talking about it now.
But you can shop 'til you drop.
:o)
I never shopped there. just looked 
oh and I went to Wall Drug too (though there I did shop...there is really nothing else to do there) Just like South of the Border they start to advertise for wall drug, 100's of miles before you get there.
too funny.
The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore shows paintings and sculptures by "outsider" artists. It's located near the harbor, so the rest of your family can go to the aquarium or the Rouse mall while you soak in all the eccentricity.
Wall drug is the coolest.
black hills gold baby!
oh and gator, witchwache falls, and the shell factory in fl...just watch out for the mermaids.
my good i forgot the dells.
wisconson dells, the entire town is a turist trap...and they have DUCK rides....can't beat teh dells. Whent to a meetign at teh copa caban...man that place is tacky.
Every now and then, I spend some time looking up informations about abandoned places and industrial ruins at sites like forgotten-ny.com and such. On one of these virtual trips I stumbled across pictures of the Florida Xanadu "house of the future" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanadu_House)
Fascinating! Did you visit one of those, too, gator?
Well, there's always the two Bedrock Cities (one in SD, one near the Grand Canyon), if'n you have an urge to celebrate with Fred & Wilma and Barney & Betty.
there are some famous desert coots out here. roadside preachers and incredible stuff to see. i love them too. my road trip calculator for how to pre-rate a roadhouse restaurant is to count the number of local business calendars that are on the walls. give bonus points for back years from the same businesses. works every time.
Gator-
I don't know if this qualifies, but...
Winchester. Mystery. House.
http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/
I don't get out much, but was all set to recommend Tom Gaskins' Cypress Knee Museum in Palmdale, Florida, one of the high points of my family's trip south (to visit wayward friends) in 1992. I still recall Tom's look of amazement when we arrived -- we must have been the first visitors in weeks, and at first he seemed not to know whether to charge us the fifty cents admission or walk off to find his shotgun.
I doublechecked and discovered the Museum was closed after a burglary in 2000. Think of all those purloined cypress knees now in the hands of shadowy private collectors!
Also, if you are travelling Hwy 61 through Palmyra, Missouri -- say, on your way from Troy to Hannibal -- be sure to stop at the artesian springs in the city park. Drink of this spring, and you will be compelled to return to Palmyra again. Caution -- it is implied that the return trip will be for keeps. It's magic!
I dunno about the Sam Clemens tourism in Hannibal, though. The town doesn't skimp on the gift shops and such, and it's fun 'n' edyacational, but there's a strange BALANCE of not-quite-kitch and historically substantive display that may be offputting to a true tourist.
While visiting all those other sites in Wisconsin, don't forget the Mustard Museum in Mount Horeb.
http://www.mustardweb.com/
Hi Gator,
If kitch is what you like, go see the "Big Banana" here in New South Wales, Australia. It about 30 feet long.
Not very touristy but kind of unusual... Emmitsburg, Iowa has a piece of the Blarney Stone in a public park that you can kiss. Settled by Irish dissidents who needed to have a piece of the Old Country around I guess. The myth is that anyone who kisses the Blarney Stone, one in an Irish castle that is I guess a bit of a hassle to kiss or the much easier one in Iowa, you are then blessed with the gift of Gab and a silver tongued devil you become. Might be worth a side-trip to small town North West Iowa.
Well, these are both a bit commercial, but fun in their own way:
Yankee Candle (the main warehouse and store) in South Deerfield, MA, is an amazing place.
Vermont Country Store (two locations in Vermont) is like a walk into an old-time general store. Pricey, but worth the perambulation through the aisles.
Okay, 'gator, you asked for it. :o)
Here's a heart-breaker for you.
There USED to be, in Myrtle Beach, on Hwy. 17 bypass, about a mile inland from the ocean:
"The Ferlin Husky Memorial Museum".
What a fool I was, to never visit, so I could tell everyone how I walked out, as exalted as from a trip to the Sistine Chapel, weeping tears of gratitude, for the chancet to pay homage to a great american musical artist, who graced us with "Dear John" and "Wings of a Dove".
WTF...here :o):
http://www.ferlinhusky.com/#
I'll mention this one not so much for the info as to mourn its passing.
But in St. Louis, MO there ustabee a Museum of Quackery devoted to--yep, semi-medical devices, patent medicines, products, and techniques.
My family and I went there once in the late 1970s or very early 1980s and it was fascinating, even though none of us had any medical background. The next year, when we tried to return, it was closed. Over the years, we'd heard rumors of it being reopened or that its exhibits being added to the McDonnell Science Museum at Forest Park. But somehow it just never happened. Damn it!
Anyway, a very interesting museum to visit in the DC area that's a little off-the-beaten-path, is the excellent National Museum of Medicine and Health at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Very wide-ranging exhibits: public and military medicine over the decades, medical training from around the world, various diseases and afflictions (again, with a military leaning), and even a set of George Washington's wooden teeth.
When I hear someone is going to DC, I always mention it to them, because, as I say, it's not well known or publicized, but I found it amazing.
These are interesting - and truly weird - links, y'all!
OT: What - if anything- does it mean for the world (or at least, US) that Fidel Castro has packed it in?
Sweaterman, I had to laugh about Bedrock City near the Grand Canyon. I'm glad(?) to hear it's still there, 'cause on my family's high-water-mark vacation of 1972, we stopped there on our way from GC.
It had just opened and I think some of the shaped concrete "houses" were still wet from being poured. It was in the middle of nowhere and I always wondered if it would make it.
Thanks for the memory!
One final museum that really struck me, then I'll shut up (for now).
The Vietnam Veterans Art Museum in Chicago is another little gem tucked away from the Sears Tower, Shedd Aquarium, Field Museum, Wrigley Field (and Building), and the Navy Pier.
Very moving and well done. And also not the norm.
(OK, I couldn't leave out a recommendation for the architectural tour of downtown Chicago from the deck of a tour boat--very nice, too!)
Neil Gaiman's American Gods takes the position that these little roadside oddities are actually places of power, where our level of reality interfaces with the level on which the gods actually operate in their power and reality.
1) Prairie Dog Town:
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/
a...OAKprairie.html
It's like a gigantic petting zoo in the middle of nowhere with a few five-legged steers and some badgers thrown in. Very weird.
2) Salvation Mountain:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Sal...vation_Mountain
If you thought one couldn't make a preaching mountain out of paint, you were wrong.
If you visit Salvation Mountain, though, be wary-the denizens of nearby Slab City are a peculiar, firearm-loving bunch.
When I was a kid, I visited another glass house in the British Columbia interior. It's made from 500,000 embalming fluid bottles. http://www.kootenayrockies.com/
a...glasshouse.html
A couple others from Alberta:
- The world's largest Ukrainian Easter Egg http://www.bigthings.ca/alberta/
...vegreville.html in Vegreville, an hour east of Edmonton
- And I drove by this numerous times in Southern Alberta an hour south of Calgary. Vulcan - home of a Starship Enterprise replica and Trek station http://www.town.vulcan.ab.ca/abo...ship/
index.html
How about the Miami Serpentarium? If it is still open, then Bill Haast is still there - he is the 200 year old guy who spent his youth "innoculating" himself with cobra venom, thus enabling him to shrug off a bite that would drop a steer like you shrug off a wasp bite. It is a tourist trap/herp zoo/venom supplier.
How about all of those little "vortex" tourist traps they have out in AZ, which are really buildings made of weird angles etc., which upsets one's equilibrium and makes you feel like you are defying gravity? They are all over the place around Sedona. Lots of crystal gazing there.
We go in big (nyuk, nyuk) for gigantic statuary up here in Maine. There is the B.F.I. in Freeport (Big F*ching Indian) which is a giant indian chief (oddly, he appears to be dressed as a Plains Indian and not one of the Northeastern tribes, but there I go again, looking for accuracy), and in Bangor, there is, for some reason which defies the same answer as the BFI, a gigantic Paul Bunyan. Both are worth a look!
Seitan; good question. I think that inevitably, it will mean that Cuba will move, albeit slowly, toward a government that's more representative.
Is Raul taking over? He's pretty old, too.
I expect there to be more dealings with the U.S., especially if Obama's elected. I don't think he'll pay as much attention to the Cuban community in Florida, as has bush, and I don't think he'll take money from the U.S. Sugar Beet Growers lobbyists. They're the ones who've spent the most on the conger-eels, to try to keep them from opening up trade with Cuba.
I can't think of why the beet growers should object to that.
Dang you beat me to it Thor - The Boswell bottle house - made from embalming bottles is only about an hour's drive from here - saw it a few times as a kid.
http://members.virtualtourist.co.../m/3bd31/de63e/
My favorite is the Buckhorn Hall of Horns in San Antonio. Full of stuffed animals and odd Texas memoribilia.
First, I too love South of the Border for the grandiosity of its kitsch. We bought backscratchers for everyone at a house party we were en route to in Myrtle Beach. They were a great hit.
In Myrtle Beach: Don't miss The Gay Dolphin-- 7-1/2 stories of astonishingly crappy kitsch, including a 6ftx9ft portrait of Bear Bryant on black velvet. I bought the ugliest doll in the world there.
Just outside of New Glarus, Wisconsin: a homemade sculpture garden filled with chicken wire and plaster larger-than-life-sized statues of mythical and historical characters. Not sure if the place is still there but if you're driving the winding roads outside of town, and it's still there, you can't miss it.
Finally, check out Jane and Michael Stern's book, "Amazing America," which is devoted to just such phenomena. Just reading about them is a hoot!
Museum of Bad Art, Dedham MA
Harvard Natural History Museum, Cambridge MA (for the glass flowers. evidently they look just like real flowers. imagine!)
It's my dream to visit the Ave Maria Grotto in Cullman, Ala. Maybe this spring.
When I was a kid, we took a three-week cross-country camping trip. One of the attractions we visited was "Fairy Tale Acres" in Sault Ste. Marie, highly recommended in the AAA guidebook. It was a wooded site with dioramas from fairy tales enacted by discarded department store mannequins in ill-fitting clothes and plastic armor.
It was most disturbing in a hilarious way.
Amish country, Lancaster, PA. It's until cute until you have to live near that shit.
you guys are great... I have been sharing these with family members who are already groaning in apprehension as I look these up on the web and maps. LOL
I am dying to see the Largest Ukrainian Easter egg now.
And I forgot, I did go to the Wisconsin Dells too! and sam clemins house in hanibal. too much fun.
have to get the book that was recommended. Has anyone bee to the car stonehenge? I read something about that somewhere...
tanbark- the karmic forces will certainly shun you for passing on Ferlyn Husky (by the way-- in my mind now-- you look like him!!! )
Okay, TLG, got two for you...in Houston go to The Orange Show....created originally to celebrate the orange, it has become a celebration of kitsch and now Visionary Art....too cool.http://www.orangeshow.org/
Also, in NYC, go to Tender Buttons...a store that sells antique buttons. My mother collected buttons for 40 years and they can be a truly lovely form of art. Going into Tender Buttons is like seeing my mother and her button friends again.
I have seen two of the Harvard glass flowers which were in a special exhibit in New Orleans and yes they look just like real flowers. They even had the little hairy thingies on the roots. Really amazing.
has anyone see the world's largest ball of twine? people are so wonderfully strange.
My advice would be to visit the largest pecan pie ever baked, in Okmulgee OK.
Savor the voice of the woman at the car rental point, as she lays out the directions to "oak... moe... geeeeeeee"
She is a national treasure.
speaking of pecans, this is just too geeky.
The Serpentarium in St. Cloud, Florida. Not so big, but some interesting specimens on display (provided the bugger's still open).
If you're passing through Houston you can't miss the world-famous Beer-can house which is newly restored and will be re-opening to the public at the end of this month
http://www.beercanhouse.org/
Don't forget to check out "The Thing" -- in Dragoon, Az (aptly named, as there are signs for a hundred miles each side of the exit for this place).
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/s..._AttrId=%
3D2023
Actually, the Thing is in Benson, AZ, but Dragoon seems like such a better name...
in related strangeness
Paul Mawhinney, owner of Rama Sound Archive of Pittsburgh, is selling an archive of 3 million record albums and 300,000 CDs on eBay this week for a minimum bid of $3 million. Mawhinney talks with Melissa Block.
listen here
I hear Clinton is winning Wisconsin. You all know the saying, "as goes Wisconsin, so goes the nation".
I might be wrong since TPM does not have any results yet. I guess we will know by 9pm
0% reporting?
Tanbark.... I liked "Wings of a Dove".
TLG - Tanbark looks like Ferlin Husky 
(He doesn't but crap that was funny )
Don't forget the Hammer Museum in Haines, Alaska. A whole (little) museum dedicated to hammers. I regret not stopping my last time through the town.
Moonglum is right -- Rock City is a must-see. You can read about it here:
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/a.../
GALOOrock.html
I love it because I went there as a kid, and it was the coolest place in the world. Then I went there as a twenty-something, and it was so boring and cheesy! The I went back as an adult, with kids of my own, and it had turned cool again.
Neil Gaiman's American Gods takes the position that these little roadside oddities are actually places of power, where our level of reality interfaces with the level on which the gods actually operate in their power and reality.
Anonymous | 02.19.08 - 10:44 am | #
That's what Tom Robbins thought too, basically. Another Roadside Attraction.
Also, a place in my home state I want to see some day is the Circus City Museum in Peru, Indiana -- http://www.perucircus.com/
peru_c...rcus_museum.asp -- since Peru was the winter home of I think one of several big circuses.
A place I can miss entirely without remorse is Santa Claus Land in Santa Claus, Indiana. http://www.santaslandnc.com/
Because when the going gets tough, the tough get weird, I give you: the Precious Moments Theme Park
Neil Gaiman's American Gods takes the position that these little roadside oddities are actually places of power
fyi, Neil Gaiman's blog has just turned seven, and to celebrate he's decided to hold a contest to see which book he's going to allow to be downloaded for a week for free.
American Gods won.
ok, Julia, that just freaked me out big time. esp. the photo hugging the huge precious moments figurine. yikes
THE Roadside America in Shartlesville PA.
Cadillac Ranch
Marsh Rainbow Arch Cotter AR.
If you're in Japan and have never been to the Yasukuni Shrine museum, I'd recommend it. It's not exactly light-hearted stuff, but it's interesting. It's Japanese military weaponry from the WWII era and all sorts of militaristic revisionism. I'd classify it somewhere between weird & creepy. Try it during Cherry Blossom season so you can kill two birds with one stone.
Also creepy and weird: The 'Gunkan' (battleship) building in Shinjuku. It'll surely be torn down in time because the bottom 8 floors (of about 12 floors) are almost completely uninhabited. The building itself seems unstable to me. I think the architect was insane. You can sneak onto the roof and it's like being on the deck of a battleship. Photos here:
http://blog.smatch.jp/kagewari/a...ari/archive/
123
If you're into folk art and can find them, the Watts towers in LA might be interesting. Apparently they're the one of the biggest pieces of folk art in America.
have to say, if you want to read one of hte greatest authors of my gneeration comeing into his own read american gods...it is a masterpice.
oi. plastic people and glass bottles. I like reading about strange places more than actually visiting: here's the author of 'Roadside Japan', one of my favorite books about weirdities in Japan: http://www.metropolis.co.jp/toky...2/
interview.asp
my mom saw this thread and said, You aren't going to GO to all those places are you??? poor woman.
my hubby is grimacing as well... muttering things about "encouraging crazy behavior" hugs to all/
xxx warning...
there is always this. from one of the many famous fertility tourist destinations here in Japan
I was also going to mention Another Roadside Attraction by Tom Robbins. You have to read it!
There's a dental museum in Baltimore.
If you go to Japan, take a trip up to Kanazawa. Great food, great pottery, beautiful garden...and the Ninji Shrine, which is crammed full of trapdoors and secret passageways.
(Actually, the funkiest kitschy place I ever went to was an amusement park in Guang-Zhou. We had to take a little ski-lift up the mountain, and got off into this immense place filled with huge concrete statues painted in garish colours. Right by the ski-lift was a rotating statue of a goddess with peacock feathers in her hair, a rabbit hopping around her, and mist coming up out vents wreathing her in a cloud.)
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