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community weblog

Free Thread: What were your odd road trip stops?

Maybe while driving through Texas, you dropped in on the Tomball Pickle Man. Passing through Vermont, maybe you took a detour to check out the three giant middle fingers. Weird Al gave us a musical tribute to The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota. Our Midwest Emo-loving teen had us stop in Urbana, Illinois yesterday so that he could snap a photo of himself in front of The American Football House. One of the weird joys of road trips is stopping to check out something that is odd, funny, or just personally interesting to you. What are some favorite stops you've made? This is your weekly #freethread.
posted by DirtyOldTown on Jan 20, 2026 at 10:05 AM

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Just FYI
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:18 AM

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(great topic though!)
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:19 AM

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Goats on the Roof in Tiger, GA
posted by indexy at 10:22 AM

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I am a fan of all free threads! My life has become busier as I have gained a roommate in the form of my niece. On the topic, I must recommend the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot which never disappoints.
posted by agatha_magatha at 10:25 AM

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Sorry, Greg, you didn't use the tag so I didn't spot it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:26 AM

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I like this topic better!

I did a solo road trip in 2000 that was entirely about these kinds of roadside things; I ended in Vegas, which felt thematic (also a friend was a reporter covering a convention there and I timed my arrival so I could mooch half a free hotel room).

Missouri was where I found the best stuff - I'd planned on the Precious Moments Chapel because how the hell can you not, and added the Meramec Caverns to the roster when I saw ads for it. I got lost looking for one of the Biggest Balls of Twine (ostensibly somewhere in Witchita) and ended up at the Worlds' Biggest Hand-Dug Well instead.

Fort Uncompahgre was a little more of a dressed-up attraction, but I still had the fun cheese of capping off a guided tour (conducted by a guy who reminded me of Uncle Jesse from the Dukes Of Hazard ) with an attempt at tomahawk throwing for target practice. I don't know what was more embarrassing - having a nine-year-old boy give me advice on my form, or having that advice work.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:29 AM

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Morro Bay, I guess. Stopped to look at the Rock. "Yep, that's a big rock," I thought. There was also a human-sized chessboard, so that's a thing. It can't compete with a giant ball of twine, but still.
posted by SPrintF at 10:34 AM

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I travel very rarely, which somewhat limits my opportunities for these kinds of things. But I have a good one anyway! When I went to Kansas City in 2023 for a vintage hardware gathering, I road tripped because I had me some vintage hardware to demo at it, and there was no way my breadboarded project would have survived airline luggage without needing major repair after.

I made it almost the whole way from Chicago, but stopped a little bit short at Chillecothe, Missouri. Which as we all know, is the home of sliced bread! The first practical automatic bread slicing machine was put into service there in 1928.
posted by notoriety public at 10:34 AM

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Family tradition when driving across Nebraska was to stop at Ole's Big Game Bar.
posted by Eddie Mars at 10:39 AM

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Uranus Fudge Factory & General Store

Fudge! Sword swallowers! Dinosaurs!
posted by downtohisturtles at 10:40 AM

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Oh boy! An open thread where I'm actually going to respond to the prompt. How about that?

1. Franconia Sculpture Park in Shafer, Minnesota - maybe this is too hifalutin' to count as a roadside attraction but what a thing to stumble upon. When we were there, there was a deflated Volkwagen Bug made of concrete, a Dog House, oh so many things. Damn, I'd love to do a snowshoe tour around this place

2. The fiberglas mold graveyard in Sparta, Wisconsin - Atlas Obscura is not joking about the hornets' nests but it's worth it

3. Taxidermied tribute to Bosco the Dog Mayor at the bar in Sunol, California - you lift up his leg and he pees beer. This was great but the funniest part was how difficult it was to get into this bar. They were doing their damnedest to appear closed and it was only the appearance of a regular happily sitting there with a beer that made us keep trying to get the door open. The bartender seemed really annoyed about us asking for some Bosco beer (like, this is your claim to fame, folks?) and let us lift the leg ourselves because she really didn't want to be bothered

4. This mysterious bar that probably doesn't really exist that we happened upon while trying to find a weird mini golf course around Guerneville, California. There was supposed to be a mermaid on a roof of a building on the way to said golf course, and we found her but not the golf course so we finally turned around back toward the 101. We were hungry so we stopped into this basic-looking roadside bar, and they had the most incredible food, an amazing selection of beers, and WORLD CUP on the TV. We just sat there for a while, and then opined that we had probably veered off the road shortly after seeing the mermaid and died in a car crash, and now we were in Heaven.

So many other amazing things. Things are really getting more homogenized out there but you can still find magic. I need another road trip soon.
posted by queensissy at 10:54 AM

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Texas edition:

We start in Amarillo -
Sure you have heard of Cadillac Ranch but down the road there is a Slug Bug Ranch. Also don't miss the Legs of Ozymandias in a field or spotting the strange signs and if brave the 72 Ounce Steak Challenge at the Big Texan (which has a Texas shaped pool).

Then on your way out to New Mexico, the town of Tucumcari is full of neon signs and hotels from the Route 66 days, include the Blue Swallow Motel. Other notable stops are the Bent Door Cafe, the Midpoint Cafe.

On your way to Oklahoma and laugh about the ironic remnants of the Leaning Tower in Groom where a diner once burned down despite a water tower next to it. Then be in awe of the Large Cross down the road. Then end up in Pampa to see "This Land Is Your Land" sculpture of the lyrics to Woody Guthrie's song. Smaller things to note on this route but getting tired of typing and linking! Haha.
posted by hillabeans at 10:57 AM

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Oh, a second trip brought me to Hole N" The Rock in Moab, Utah; I was mostly there to visit a couple national parks with friends, but they encouraged me to visit the Hole as well because I'd been talking about my kitsch road trip for 12 years at that point. Hole really leans into its roadside-stop status like whoa.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:03 AM

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A great list of oddball roadside scenery can be found here. Zow!
posted by TedW at 11:10 AM

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I have been to:
the largest ball of sisal twine in Kansas.
On the same trip, the largest Czech egg, and a big easel with a fake van Gogh on it.
Other trips - the pistachio.
The baked potato (museum also had VR potato farming and one signed by Quayle.) (remember when that was the political drama?)
The rubber chicken.
I am pretty sure I have other Big Stuff in my photo albums, but I can't think of them just now.

My day job is so busy, my mutual aid group is busy, and me and my dad are entering month two of new normal since mom died. I have/had plans to hit states 47, 48, 49 of my list this summer. I was going to do the Minnesota State Fair. I booked tickets for a concert there and everything. Two and a half weeks ago. Now everything's on hold. Legitimately don't know what to do.
posted by cobaltnine at 11:20 AM

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Ladies and gentlemen, The Leaning Tower of Niles.
posted by JimInSYR at 11:21 AM

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We've long been the family that drives weird routes on our way to a destination, looking at things along the way, and caused the children to endure participating.

The World's Largest Talking Cow, located in Wisconsin, but it was broken and not talking at the time we visited.

A lot of where we stopped was purely serendipity. I am not even sure where it was but we were driving down an old US Highway and the sheriffs were blocking the road. Apparently there was a parade in this small town, not just the "pickup with a sign on the side" kind of parade, but weird, huge, ornate floats made from a combination of love and garbage. I know I got some pictures of it someplace, but it's one of those things that don't work as well when planned out. I think it, too, was in Wisconsin.

Oh, the Rhinelander Hodag. What's with Wisconsin?

One time we were just driving down a country road -- I think this was on our way to some random small county fair (another thing we subjected our kids to) and there were just a bunch of giant cement animals lined up along the road: horses, cows, lions, etc. We stopped to walk along them, and not long after, in the distance, we could see somebody on a riding lawnmower trekking our way. The old man who was piloting his chariot came to tell us all about where they came from -- some many states away -- just so he could place them along a road several miles from any sign of civilization and talk to whoever stops by to see them.

The Vining (MN) Sculpture Park is a quick stop, the life's work of an artist and his welding machine.
posted by AzraelBrown at 11:23 AM

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Were you even driving through central Missouri if you didn't stop to investigate some WALNUT BOWLS?
posted by pantarei70 at 11:25 AM

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Oh - the person who originally posted about one thing here took their post down, but I saw it and have been wanting to see Dinosaur Kingdom ever since. The guy who made it imagined an alternate history in which the Union Army somehow invented Time Travel during the Civil War, and brought some dinosaurs back and set them loose on the Confederate Troops. So it's a model dinosaur park with a bunch of tableaux of Stonewall Jackson or Robert E. Lee doing battle with a triceratops.

TELL ME THAT DOESN'T SOUND AWESOME.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:35 AM

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There have been many, and almost all from this wonderful site.
posted by gottabefunky at 11:37 AM

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I finally got out to see Carhenge, and honestly, it was pretty cool. They're inviting artists to paint portions of it so it's not all gray monoliths.
posted by PussKillian at 11:40 AM

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I went to Mr. Ed's Elephant Museum.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:41 AM

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This one was a trifecta - a mastodon, a Flinstone's house, and a 45th parallel marker.
posted by mollweide at 11:41 AM

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I haven't yet had an excuse to stop at Ohio's tiny Pencil Sharpener Museum, but one day.

The 99% Invisible podcast, episode 362, Goodness Gracious Great Balls of Twine, goes into more detail about the various claims to twine-ball fame than you thought you'd need.
posted by Western Infidels at 11:50 AM

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Among other places I have been to Foamhenge (at its original Natural Bridge location), Mini Graceland, and the Georgia Guidestones (before they got blown up).
posted by TedW at 11:53 AM

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Then on your way out to New Mexico, the town of Tucumcari is full of neon signs and hotels from the Route 66 days, include the Blue Swallow Motel. Other notable stops are the Bent Door Cafe, the Midpoint Cafe.

And if you keep going west, you wind up in Santa Rosa NM, which has a divable (as in scuba) opening called the Blue Hole, which totally rules, even if you don't dive but just jump into it. I believe it markets itself as the only natural divable location in New Mexico.

I40 a bit farther west also has the Bandera volcano, which is an ancient volcano with ice caves, year around. There is ice, which is cool (literally), but the terms 'volcano' and 'cave' are used very loosely. The cave is like 20 ft into the ground and the ancient volcano just looks like your basic hill/ridge which you see all around New Mexico, so you need the sign to know it's an old volcano.

Durant OK supposedly has the 'worlds largest peanut', but it's made of concrete and not particularly large, at only like 3 ft. It's a 'I stopped for this? Kinda thing', but my kids still laugh about it, so I guess it was ok.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:19 PM

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Yippee, bonus Free Thread!

Not road-side (wharf side?) but I got to see the Big Fiddle in Sydney (not Australia) Nova Scotia once.
posted by eekernohan at 12:45 PM

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There's 2 places in Rural KS worth seeing: Worlds Largest Chzech Egg in Wilson KS and the Garden Of Eden, across the highway in Lucas KS. Full of Cement Sculptures that you have to see. So worth it. Also in Lucas is the Grassroots Art Center, and back to Wilson, a great chicken restaurant called From Scratch and a refurbished Railroad Hotel, The Midland Railroad Hotel.
posted by evilDoug at 12:52 PM

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I really miss the old days of the Green Tortoise in its long-distance service format. I would ride it from southern California up to Eugene and/or Portland, Oregon. Ahh, youth. Back when I had days to burn on a bus filled with hippies and futons. If I remember correctly, we'd stop somewhere close to the border for dinner and a sauna. The passengers would divide into 2 groups - one for cooking and one for KP duty. Whoever wasn't working could enjoy the sauna and dunk into the nearby stream.

After my hippie era, I lived in Japan for a few years teaching English. I had a Suzuki Cervo that I would drive around and get lost in (on purpose) on the backroads of Gifu-ken. I accidentally started an obscure 33-temple pilgrimage, so finally had a structure to my wanderings, and managed to fill up my nokyocho with beautiful calligraphy from all the temples on the list. Some of those temples were VERY surprised to see me...
posted by ikahime at 12:53 PM

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Some of the interesting things to look at on the Canadian Prairie are below grade. So you'll be driving along, there will be a little marker directing you to pull off, and *bam* Badlands. Or big ass stone that used to be above grade but centuries of bison rubbing themselves against the stone have created a depression with the rock in the centre.
posted by Mitheral at 1:48 PM

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https://i0.wp.com/kernut.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/100_2257.jpg?ssl=1
posted by Previous username Jacen at 2:00 PM

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You see billboards for it all up and down I-10 as you're going through Arizona, but you haven't been through Arizona until you've stopped and seen The Thing. Is it worth it? /shrug. But it's a Thing.
posted by pdb at 2:12 PM

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SEE ROCK CITY!

About which, on a family vacation circa 1980 to Savannah and Tybee Island, Dad saw the ubiquitous barn roofs painted with "SEE ROCK CITY" for the first time. Every time we passed one, Dad would shout, "SEE ROCK CITY!"

So sometime in the next couple of summers, we did just that. We went to Rock City. Did the funicular railway. Ruby Falls. Even the Chattanooga Choo-Choo. We got Dad a "SEE ROCK CITY" barn Christmas ornament and it hung on the tree every year since.

As always, my deepest sympathies to hearts that grieve and best wishes to those who struggle with THE WEIGHT.
posted by ob1quixote at 2:42 PM

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[Obvious maybe, but yeah, we're leaving this one up, 'cause why not?! ]
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 2:48 PM

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Pistachioland in Almagordo, NM. Well worth visiting if you're already going to nearby White Sands National Park.

Vulcan, in Alberta, Canada, has cute Star Trek stuff.
posted by wicked_sassy at 2:53 PM

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For several years, the Google Street View office's conference rooms were all named after roadside attractions: World's Largest Ball of Twine, Cadillac Ranch, Mitchell Corn Palace, etc. The prior theme had been famous explorers, until someone (quite reasonably) decided that a) many of them were actually quite terrible people, b) there weren't enough famous women explorers to easily achieve gender balance in the naming, and c) it was also quite a Euro-centric list.

For some reason, after a few years of roadside attractions, facilities decided to change them to... a mix of mountains and tree species, I think? Something bland enough that I can't remember the theme, but it stuck for the better part of a decade. I don't think anyone working in the building was happy about it. (And for whatever bureaucratic snafu reason, Mitchell Corn Palace retained its name for several years after everything else got renamed.)
posted by reventlov at 2:56 PM

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It's only a roadside attraction in the loosest sense, because it's a short walk into the woods, just outside of Roche Harbor, on San Juan Island, WA. But Afterglow Vista, aka the John S. McMillin Memorial, is kind of bonkers.

In 1930, a rich guy who'd moved to the island had a mausoleum built for himself and his family. It's an open-air circle of columns with a stone table in the center. Stone chairs around the table hold the family's ashes.

Just one of many weird structures around the world that exist at the nexus of "Freemasonry" and "rich people", but it's got quite a vibe, and it's only like 1/4 mile walk.
posted by gurple at 3:24 PM

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The Bob Wills museum in Turkey Texas
posted by TwoToneRow at 3:40 PM

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39 COMMENTS TO WALL DRUG
posted by Horace Rumpole at 3:45 PM

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On I-70, in the middle of nowhere West Virginia, the gorgeous and gorgeously unexpected Prabhupada's Palace of Gold.
posted by lapispimpernel at 3:45 PM

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The Four Corners monument
posted by TwoToneRow at 3:48 PM

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The whole idea of road-side attractions is such an American thing. I'm not saying there aren't road trips and cool/fun things to see on them in the rest of the world, but there's something very USian about deliberately building identity and meaning into the fairly mundane act of moving from one spot to another with these quirky, self-referential and self-aware attractions. There's something about car-culture and the way the US's self-created mythos in there too.

Anyway, I once saw one of those giant Paul Bunyan and Babe statues in Oregon or Washington. It was certainly big.
posted by signal at 4:32 PM

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The Big Merino is a 15.2-metre (50 ft) tall concrete statue of a merino ram located in Goulburn, New South Wales, Australia. It was modelled after Rambo, a stud ram that lived on a local property, "Bullamallita".
It's as impressive as it sounds :-)
posted by drinkmaildave at 5:15 PM

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If we're going to talk about Australia, we've got to talk about Larry the Lobster.
posted by nickzoic at 5:29 PM

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signal: "Anyway, I once saw one of those giant Paul Bunyan and Babe statues in Oregon or Washington. It was certainly big."

It's in my old neighborhood! I miss living in NoPo.
posted by pdb at 5:49 PM

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Roadside attractions? This is where I'm a Viking!

I live 20 minutes from the Twine Ball (technically, the Biggest Ball of Twine created by one person). Any others, to my knowledge, were done by groups.

I've always been a sucker to see a giant fiberglass creature, but since my older son started college in Madison, WI, I've had cause to see more cheese mice than I thought existed. When he was still in HS and needed driving hours for his license, his brother suggested a trip to see an otter. I've also seen a crow, many fish, and by accident because we needed to stop for gas, Iowa's largest frying pan. If you like this sort of thing, you need to check out the place that makes them all, also in Wisconsin.

Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention House on the Rock, but y'all probably know about that. But did you know you can actually visit Lukenbach, Texas?
posted by cinnamonduff at 7:02 PM

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Well there's the Giant Artichoke in Castroville (where Marilyn Monroe was once the Artichoke Queen!), which has been repainted lately!

But my favorite is The Peg House in Leggett. It is so-called because of the joinery of the general store building, not because it was a male brothel. They have great salmon burgers there, and Mendocino oysters, and live music a lot of the time. Also, bathrooms, which are few and far between on that stretch of 101, as my bladder can attest.
posted by duckandpenguin at 8:27 PM

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The Carranza Memorial, deep in the New Jersey Pine Barrens.
posted by gudrun at 8:37 PM

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I have been to some of the more famous ones mentioned above (Carhenge, House on the Rock, Wall Drug)... but I have to toss in a not-so-famous one. I was traveling through Indiana and was in a town. Not tiny, not huge, seemed like a pretty ordinary town, but I saw a sign for the Dan Quayle museum. Naturally I had to check it out. It tells you all about what he did before he was VP, and also how important the office of the Vice President is.

That seems EXTREMELY 'only in America' to me!
posted by inexorably_forward at 2:44 AM

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The Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park in Wilson, NC, is a wonderful example of a roadside attraction that grew up to be a bona fide community treasure.

Mr. Simpson created epic-scale wind-driven kinetic artwork from discarded highway signage and assorted construction debris. For years folks sought out his farm to view the installations from their cars. As many are festooned with reflectors, the view on a windy night could be mind-blowing.

When Simpson passed, the people of Wilson moved his work to a public space for all to enjoy. On a breezy day the place is an amusement park for the eyes. Cannot recommend enough.
posted by kinnakeet at 3:41 AM

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The whole idea of road-side attractions is such an American thing. I'm not saying there aren't road trips and cool/fun things to see on them in the rest of the world, but there's something very USian about deliberately building identity and meaning into the fairly mundane act of moving from one spot to another with these quirky, self-referential and self-aware attractions.

One good theory I have as to why -

The US is big. Really, mind-bogglingly, you-know-the-Douglas-Adams-quote big. Even just crossing from a point in one state to another neighboring one can take a half a day of driving. The highways for the long-haul trips also tend to avoid the big cities - so all you have to look at are trees and/or hills, depending on where you are (if you're in Kansas you have neither).

Driving that long through that monotonous a landscape makes you go a little funny, and you will take advantage of any excuse to just look at something unusual - when I was driving through Kansas, I pulled over about four times to take pictures of random road signs that struck me only halfway funny, mostly because "oh thank God it's something different from just plain flat prairie". And if you pull over, maybe you can be persuaded to spend a couple bucks on a Coke or something, and if there's some kind of Thing there maybe that'll give your stir-crazy kids a chance to run around a little and burn off energy...

So I think most of the roadside stuff came about through some nexus of fed-up drivers and opportunistic locals in their various small towns.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:44 AM

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AzraelBrown: The World's Largest Talking Cow, located in Wisconsin, but it was broken and not talking at the time we visited.

I just realized, since The World's Largest Talking Cow wasn't talking, that makes it more of a World's Big But Not Huge Non-Talking Cow, because Salem Sue in North Dakota is the World's Largest (Non-Talking) Holstein Cow.
posted by AzraelBrown at 6:08 AM

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It's not out on the road, but downtown (and, in the 'wrong' part); however, it should be a roadside attraction. May I present The Big Chair of Washington DC, (since 1959). Otherwise known as simply, Chair.
posted by Rash at 5:33 PM

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I want to be a person who stops at roadside attractions, but I'm not. I'm always too focused on getting where I'm going to stop at places that look interesting. I do try and visit local museums where ever I end up though at the end of the day if I can.

Had the my cat's vet appointment today for their health certificates and I'm crossing my fingers that there isn't another winter storm next weekend when I leave. My goal this weekend is to take advantage of being stuck inside to do all my packing and getting the boxes ready to be mailed via send my bag. Need to figure out the exact details of how that'll work along with selling my car and the timing there of. So close yet so far!
posted by Art_Pot at 11:54 AM

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Okay, so everyone remember Emergency Work Project? IT GOT SCRAPPED TODAY. Why?! Who the hell knows, not I, the explanation made no sense. All that urgency for nothing. Now we have NEW Emergency Work Projects, and STILL have to do a presentation on Old Emergency Work Project (why?!?!) for The Manager Who Lost It At Us on Tuesday. Awesome.

I remind myself that frankly, if I never do my job in full, if they scrap projects, who cares as long as I stay employed for 20 years and don't get fired. Twenty more years to endure.

As for board drama: the board has now admitted in public there was a breach in fiduciary duty of a former officer who has been reported, please give us donations, as we will likely start getting evicted at the end of February unless we come up with huge amounts of money, and we had to fire a volunteer for cheesing off a ton of people and spying on them. Said volunteer messaged me afterwards saying she had no idea why she got fired. Me: ok, sweetie. It's a shame she was being divey and argumentative, because she's a good worker. But....yeah.

For the moment I have almost nothing scheduled for the weekend except another emergency board meeting. Keep that quiet, so I can hide out from the world for two days.
posted by jenfullmoon at 1:08 PM

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