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"It's our blood and bones and these whistles and phones against Miller's and Noem's dirty lies."

when folk medicine held little curative promise. To be in the presence of a relic is to be blessed by its holy radioactivity. Moreover, pilgrimage was the only socially legitimate justification (besides war) for adventure when almost no one travelled more than a few days from their hometown. Pilgrimage became a major economic driver, which explains both the "furta sacra" phenomenon of monks stealing relics from other churches, and the fact that at one point like 9 heads of John the Baptist were on display in various parts of Europe. (It's also said that if all the pieces of the true cross were put together, the cross would have been like 50 feet high).

I've seen some gnarly ones. St. Ambrose's skeleton is in a glass case dressed in his bishops robes. St. Catherine of Sienna's mummified head is on display in a glass reliquary in Sienna's cathedral. And I'm making my fourth pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela this summer to visit the bones of my buddy St. James the Apostle. The pilgrimage boom today, though, is not so much about the destination, as it is about a timeout from life (I could fly right to Compostela if all I wanted was to visit the tomb).

the "roadside attractions" of the Middle Ages.

Even though I am skeptical about their factual validity, I find myself captivated by the tradition. And I struggle to piece together exactly why.

If the middle ages had a touristy roadside amusement park, this would be it. They've got EVERYTHING:

* the forearm of St. Vincent, on view (ew)

* not to be outdone, ALSO the arm of St. George

* a thorn from the crown of thorns

* a piece of the true cross (!)

* THE holy grail (along with a plaque ripping on other churches' grails around the world which are total fakes)

Like, perhaps, the right arm of John the Baptist in Siena Italy?

I've got a long list along these lines....

Not kitschy-weird, like below, but both pretty weird. Watts Towers, a lifetime of garbage to build, well, something. It's pretty interesting! But also, why.

Terra Cotta Warriors: like, definitely better than the approach of some Pharoahs to be buried alongside their real servants. Definitely better if it's just figures. But there are a lot of figures. What would possess someone to do that, and then just bury them all? It's crazy.

Love this thread, thinking about past destinations, and reading others here.

Sophomore year, my two roommates and I decided that for fall break, we’re just going to drive west and see how far we could go. My parents okayed us driving their Chrysler New Yorker and gave me a credit card “just in case.”

The route we decided on took us through South Dakota. A friend of ours was from Mitchell, SD and told us we should stop in and her Mom would feed us. She was going to be in NYC with other ND friends. Everything was going great driving through SD when the car started overheating and shut down. We pull over and one of my one roommates walked to the next exit to call a tow truck. (I don’t recall how long it took him or how long we waited.)

Turns out the closest town was Mitchell, SD. The tow truck takes us there. We don’t know our friend’s phone number or address, but we look in the phone book. Thankfully, there were only three “Murrays.” So we start calling and asking if they had a daughter with the name of our friend. I think it was the first number, but her dad answered, She clearly hadn’t communicated (with him, at least) that we would be passing through, but we explained that we new her, she had told us to look them up, and that our car had broken down and we were in Mitchell, SD. We needed a place to stay. Could we stay with them?

I think he was hesitant, but he came and picked us up. Her parents were very friendly and hospitable. They fed us and let us stay. Her dad knew people at the dealership. It was a blown head gasket that normally would have taken a couple days to repair. At his request, they prioritized it and got us back on the road the next afternoon. While we waited, we toured Mitchell and the Corn Palace. Also, It’s a good thing I had my parents’ credit card to pay for the repair.

We stayed that night out in the open, tossing our sleeping bags on the ground. Pure freedom!

The next day, we stopped at Wall Drug. I wanted to buy some cowboy boots and what else were we going to do anyway. I went to pay for the boots with a check. They said they’d need to see a credit card or some other assurance to accept a personal check. I asked if my parents’ was okay and they said it would be. When I went to get it out of my wallet, I couldn’t find it. They let me buy the boots, but it wasn’t in the car either.

So I called the mechanic in Mitchell. Sure enough. I’d left it there. They had it and agreed to keep it until we came back through on our way back. We made it to the Black Hills, saw Mt. Rushmore, and turned around. Good on their word, the mechanic had the credit card when we swung through Mitchell again.

I think I waited five or six years before telling my parents I left their credit card in Mitchell, SD and didn’t realize until a day (and a couple hundred miles) later that I didn’t have it.

There are like a million Buc-ees, so I'm not sure why it would be a tourist attraction, it's just like any other big service station except they pay better and have somewhat better food.

It feels more to me like when people get really loyal to a brand in an almost ironic sense, like how people wore Sriracha or In-And-Out t-shirts around for a while?

Wall Drug, you can take a photo with a wooden statue of Annie Oakley where the face has degraded into a really macabre horror show. And you can buy name brand cowboy boots, almost as if you were in Allens in Austin. And you can buy a pork tenderloin sandwich and kinda walk around a somewhat old-west area.

It was one of the stops on our honeymoon, I have photos but the ones on the internet are much better.

"so they used mud"

"they didn't use mud Dad, they used sod"

"that's right Audrey. But when they ran out of sod...they used mud"

I probably was that guy on our big road trip.

It's got all of the wonder of going to your local church auxiliary building that has a gym for activities.

Always a welcome signpost after a midnight snap decision to drive to Vegas (baby) that you were almost there.

Bass Pro rules. Endless fun for the kids.

both in its history and its current composition, that I find it at least mildly charming. It makes zero sense, but it's part of history. So, fine.

Plus, the signs are one of the few things that make that drive tolerable. So why the heck not go see it?

Buck-ees? Nah.

My wife and I were youth group volunteers. And we were chaperoning a service trip in northern South Dakota. On the way back we planned to stop to see the Corn Palace. My wife had been there as a kid. She built the thing up as a combination of Disney, the Rose Bowl Parade, and the Taj Mahal, but waaaaaaaaaaay better.

Those kid were ..... disappointed. And they have never stopped letting her hear about it (neither have I).

Mildly interesting local tradition when you have to stop SOMEWHERE along that interminable drive for lunch? Sure.

MUST SEE WONDER OF THE GREAT PLAINS? Um, no.

You'll see endless billboards for Little America. What is Little America? It's nothing. It's a truck stop, hotel, and restaurant.

https://littleamerica.com/

at the Lodge Cast Iron Museum in South Pittsburg, TN

https://www.lodgecastiron.com/pages/museum?srsltid=AfmBOorxT7dkmHFksyzG9LIUw_JWNnbAx8QC...

https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2220

Small town with an angle about being the first nuclear powered town in the world. And then in one of the town parks, you suddenly come upon the conning tower of a submarine. The 666 designation only adds to the curiosity. It's from the USS Hawkbill.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-devil-boat-arco-idaho

It's on the way to Craters of the Moon National Park, which is a great place to visit and hike if you never want your shoes to be clean again.

https://www.nps.gov/crmo/index.htm

Big road trip with my family and the in-laws, leaving Des Moines in a sweet rented suburban and headed for Yellowstone

Day 1 - looked at the corn palace for 20 minutes. Boo. rented cabins at the badlands, HELL YES. Go on an astronomy night and the rangers let you use these huge telescopes to see Saturn and the moons of Jupiter and we all saw the space station.

Day 2 - badlands hikes all morning, left badlands national park and had lunch at Wall Drug. Come on, this is not a thing. I guess you can buy cowboy boots there?. Short drive to Custer State park, stayed at the state game lodge, really liked the whole sylvan lake area, looked at mt Rushmore, etc. Sturgis was happening so that was a mixed bag

Day 3 - stopped at Devils Tower, drove all the way to Cody WY. Stayed at Cody Cowboy village bc there was a music show buffet - honestly highly recommend. Then the NIGHT RODEO 10/10 recommend. I saw a 12 year old girl ride a bull while wearing Hurt Locker armor.

Day 4 - finished the drive to Yellowstone. Stayed in the old rooms at Old Faithful, you have to use a communal bathroom like it’s a college dorm; it rules.

Day 5-7 still in Yellowstone, lots to see, you all know it :) Do the wagon train steak thing that leaves from RooseveltZ

Day 8 - left Yellowstone. Drove south to Grand Tetons NP, had lunch at the Wort in Jackson. Probably could have stayed here bc the drive after Jackson and across WY is unfathomably empty. Ultimately found a hotel in Laramie bc we could not push any farther. (It was the Hampton inn. It’s nice! Later we saw the stadium Josh Allen played at.)

Day 9 - drove across Nebraska and back to Des Moines. At this point we were kind of cursing our failure to plan things for the second half of the drive. Nebraska is empty until you reach Omaha. We did get a Runza.

I realize this is a departure from the original intent of this thread, but if anyone is planning a similar trip they can build on our successes and learn from our failures.

We did NOT stop at the vertigo mystery spot, and I think Flintstones World closed when all the concrete houses and characters crumbled to dust, but both were more or less on this path.

I didn't mean to yuck your yum.

DR. EVERMORE'S FOREVERTRON

https://www.worldofdrevermor.com/

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Grade F: Stores that are about themselves, e.g., Bucky's or Wall Drug. Not even going through the motions of offering you an attraction of any kind, it's just calculated manipulation. Fuck these places.

https://bluegraysky.com/forum/index.php?id=580701

https://bluegraysky.com/forum/index.php?id=580713

Courtesy of Alliance, Nebraska.

Carhenge

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Yes, it's a big 80 room house on top of a sandstone rock and the rooms are full of all kinds of weird collections of . . . stuff. I don't know how else to describe it. One room has (they claim) the World's Largest Indoor Carousel. Another room has a big collection of player pianos, and they all work. Yeah, stuff like that.

I might empasize that it's "The World's Only Corn Palace". Yes, it really is made of corn. Among other things, inside there is a full basketball court where they used to hold the South Dakota high school tournament finals.

Wall Drug became famous because of billboards hundreds of miles in either direction, as a place to stop in the middle of nowhere, otherwise known as the Badlands. "You are only 100 miles from Wall Drug". So out of a combination of curiosity and boredom after miles and miles of nothing interesting out the window, people stopped at Wall Drug.

Didn’t go in, but bought a signed copy of one of the founders’ comic books about Dinosaurs and the Civil War at the gift shop. If you’ve had an enough bourbon it can be interesting read. It explains how dinosaurs came to be involved in the Civil War, which involves Stonehedge for some reason. And how Stonewall Jackson is saved from death and gets a bionic arm to fight the dinosaurs which the Yankees have enslaved because they are hypocritical on the whole slavery thing. There are also cavemen and slime people (maybe they’re not quite “people”), and a two headed hillbilly born on the Mason-Dixon Line. The Yankees also have a Bigfoot on their side for some reason. It was the weirdest thing I’d read since Finnegan’s Wake.

Photogs, myself included, often venture out there in the wee small hours to shoot the Milky Way with the sculptures in the foreground (see 2nd link).

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-m&q=Anza-Borrego%20Desert%20sculpt...

https://www.google.com/search?num=10&client=firefox-b-1-m&hs=qb&sca_esv=663...

It was remarkably close to my vision of hell, albeit with much better pre-made burritos than I would have expected from either a gas station or perdition.

The billboards and puns are better than the actual experience of what amounts to just a store. But if you know what you’re going to get when you pull off the freeway, it’s worth the stop.

The reviews on Yelp or Google are also pretty amusing, especially the ones from people who offered some review based on legitimate standards.

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Back in the 90s. Dude was a dentist and he would pretty openly discuss how that place made it so he barely had to work. Printed money. And it felt wildly decrepit back then.

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Sometimes I rhyme slow sometimes I rhyme quick.

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https://visitlagrange.com/things-to-do/biblical-history-center/#:~:text=Biblical%20Hist...

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"F--- everyone who isn't us."
#Team128

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At night, the ice weasels come.

Fantastic rundown, and I agree with your taxonomy. And though I don't like the concept of Buc-ee's (a hundred gas pumps, cheesy merchandise, unlimited sugary and salty snacks), the fresh food is freaking incredible for a glorified convenience store.

We visited our first one north of Denver on a road trip last summer and liked it so much we went back the next day.

In the vein of those Gila Bend dinos you mentioned, Borrego Springs has some really cool metal sculptures out in the desert.

On our last ski trip to Mammoth, we stopped at the site of the original McDonald's in San Bernardino, which has been turned into a kitschy museum.

Or so I've heard.

Corny, funny, stupid. Checks all the boxes for roadside kitsch.

https://decoymuseum.com/

https://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/819

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"F--- everyone who isn't us."
#Team128

It's like it was built and then all upkeep was just avoided.

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"F--- everyone who isn't us."
#Team128

a 1950s-era Mexican-themed truck stop/tchotchke emporium/novelty adventure park on the south side of the Carolinas border along interstate 95. Imagine crumbling googie architecture with a healthy dollop of cringey stereotyping. Various bits of the rotting complex are still open.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_of_the_Border_(attraction)

My family used to have a grading system for roadside attractions that went something like:

Grade A: Top national parks, famous places (e.g., The Vegas Strip, The Louvre, Westminster Abbey) or Disneyworld-type destinations. These are the reasons people go places.

Grade B: Good state parks, (quality) amusement parks, fun cities (e.g., Asheville or Memphis). Not "destination"-level places, per se, but worthy of weekend trips.

Grade C: Kitchy, themed attractions of some interest and a modicum of capital investment--at least at one point. Roadside zoos, alpine coasters, "Drive through a tree!" forests, big, but not huge waterfalls, etc. (e.g, Carhenge, Wisconsin Dells pyramid waterskiing ladies, all the shit in Gatlinburg and Pidgeon Forge). Often drawn by the economy of nearby Grade A attractions.

Grade D: Assorted grotty, poorly-financed hangers-on scrounging on the outskirts of more legitimate attractions. Tchotchke-peddling, old timey "General Stores," vertigo houses, Stan Pines-level mystery spots, dilapidated putt putt courses with crumbling concrete or fiberglass statuary. Pathetic places functioning as shitty alternatives for poor families. ("Why pay park prices?! Buy your (generic, off brand) Disney attire here!")

Grade F: Stores that are about themselves, e.g., Bucky's or Wall Drug. Not even going through the motions of offering you an attraction of any kind, it's just calculated manipulation. Fuck these places.

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It’s 1864. Them wacky Yankees is at it again! Tryin’ to use living dinosaurs as weapons of mass destruction against the South. But ole Dixie has more than a few tricks still left up her sleeve.

Experience a wooded, walking adventure of the wildest, weirdest, craziest dinosaur park the Washington Post has called Amazing! Brilliant! Hilarious! This is definitely not your father’s dinosaur park!

Created by nationally known attraction builder and theme park designer, Mark Cline whose work has been featured on The Discovery, Travel and Smithsonian Channels as well as on FOX, TBS and BBC Networks. His creations are also used by TV, movie and Rock Stars!

​Enter into a time tunnel and discover Stonewall Jackson battling a vicious spinosaurus! get surrounded by deadly meat eaters! See Abe Lincoln after he’s lassoed a pteranodon chewing up the Gettysburg address! witness a stegosaurus being milked! If you like prehistoric creatures and civil war history, you’ll flip out over Dinosaur Kingdom II!

https://www.dinosaurkingdomii.com/

I was going through some photos the other night and came across some from a stop we made years ago in Gila Bend, AZ, in the middle of nowhere between Yuma and Tucson. Gila Bend has a few weird/interesting things:

* gas station dinosaurs

* the Space Age Lodge, a retro-themed Best Western that wasn't always retro

* one truly interesting piece of history, Stout's Hotel, which is closed down but still standing. Stout's was built in the 1920s and had a restaurant, a pharmacy, a post office, and rumor had it a brothel.

https://www.motleydesign.group/post/stout-s-hotel-gila-bend

Strange but true tourist attractions: whaddaya got?