Summer Travel Guide 2016

thepilot.com:

Summer is here again, and for a lot of folks, summer means vacations. Vacations mean travel.

So, as is our custom and practice in this column, we once again bring you our annual compendium of weird, wacky and occasionally fascinating vacation destinations:

— If you’re a fan of bizarre incomprehensible gibberish, you could stay home and catch one of Sarah Palin’s stump speeches for Donald Trump on YouTube.

Or you could head down to northern Georgia and visit the Georgia Guidestones, the origin of which is something straight out of “The X-Files.”

Seems that a mysterious gentleman calling himself “R.C. Christian” showed up in the little town of Nuberg, Ga., with $50,000, a shoebox with a replica of Stonehenge in it, and a request: He wanted a monument of his own built.

And what a monument it is: four towering granite monoliths, inscribed in multiple languages including Egyptian hieroglyphics, Classical Greek, Sanskrit, Babylonian cuneiform, Chinese, Swahili and Hebrew, with the words “Let These Be Guidestones to an Age of Reason,” along with certain “commandments” supposed to bring about said age.

Those commandments include “Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with Nature” (I think that horse left the barn a while ago) and “Guide reproduction wisely, improving fitness and diversity.”

After arranging for the construction of the Guidestone, Mr. “Christian” (who admitted that that wasn’t his real name) disappeared without a trace. Ooo-EEEEeeeee-oooo …

— You wanna see something really scary? Then head out to the little desert outpost of Tonopah, Nev., midway between Las Vegas and Reno, and check yourself into what might be the world’s most terrifying place of accommodation: The Clown Motel.

The travel website Roadtripper.com tells us: “Not only is the lobby filled with hundreds of menacing clowns, but each and every room is clown-themed as well.

On each of the walls are hung portraits of famous clowns, from Bozo to Pagliacci, their soulless eyes intent on watching your every move from their faux-gold frames.”

But wait. It gets worse. Next door is a graveyard, filled with the corpses of miners who died of plague. To top it all off, according to online reviews, the Wi-Fi is terrible. Definitely not a place for the faint-of-heart.

— It’s entirely possible that someday you may be on the road, turn to your significant other, and go, “Honey Pie, I don’t think we know enough about hobos.”

Well, the cure for that particular brand of ignorance is in lovely Britt, Iowa, where you will find the Hobo Museum and Gift Shop, which says it “commemorates America’s first migratory work force.”

At the museum, you can see authentic hobo wear (old clothes) hobo gear (upturned buckets seem to be prominently featured), as well as “books written by hobos, music recorded by hobos, (and) crafts created by hobos,” according to the museum website. There’s even a Hobo Convention, where a Hobo King and Queen are elected.

Yes, it appears there are still hobos, even though the site does allow as how most of them drive these days rather than hop freight trains. I don’t know. That seems to kind of blur the classic definition a bit. But then, what do I know about hobos? Just shows how much we need the museum.

— Regular readers of this feature know that we often enjoy discussing freakishly large representations of everyday items: ketchup bottles, baseball bats and the like. Well, not this time.

This time, we’re going to send you to Lucas, Kan., wherein resides The World’s Largest Collection of the World’s Smallest Versions of the World’s Largest Things Traveling Roadside Attraction and Museum.

It’s the creation of local artist Erika Nelson, who, like your Humble Columnist, seeks out the aforementioned large objects. Except she then creates tiny replicas of them and puts them in a vehicle, which she drives around as a traveling exhibit. Actually, now there are two vehicles, because the only thing cooler than one WLCoWSVoWLT is two of them.

Mysterious monoliths, scary clown hotels and small versions of big versions of ordinary sized things — it’s all part of the rich pageant that is the American road.

Happy traveling, and I hope you see something that makes you laugh and go, “Did we really just see that”?

Our Fearless Summer Vacation Guide

The Pilot Newspaper: Opinion

Summertime again, and the livin’, as the song tells us, is easy. Let’s just run down the checklist. Fish? Jumping. Cotton? High. And so on.

With summertime comes vacation time, and with vacation time comes our sort-of-annual guide to the wonderful and weird destinations for travelers. Check out some of these attractions:

— About 15 years ago, a fellow named Otis Eldridge in Rogersville, Tenn., went to buy an old antique coffee grinder from an old country store. He ended up leaving with two flatbed truckloads of goods and equipment. So what else is a guy like that to do but build a replica of that old country store on his farm? And once you do something like that, why, you need to have a town around it, right?

And thus was born “Memory Lane,” a replica of a 1950s-era small Southern town, complete with town hall/police department/jail, car dealership, movie theater, diner, filling station, etc. It’s all authentic, right down to the restored cheesy ’50s-era signage. Think of it as a kind of Colonial Williamsburg for Andy Griffith fans.

Alas, we missed it this year. Memory Lane is open to the public only once a year, on Memorial Day weekend, when Mr. Eldridge hosts a classic car show on the property. So mark your calendar.

— Who among us does not love possums? Well, me, for one. But apparently, the little town of Wausau, Fla., self-proclaimed “Possum Capital of the World,” is quite fond of the weird little beasts. They even have a “Possum Monument” right downtown on the edge of the swamp.

The true possum fan, however, will want to be there the first Saturday in August, when they hold the annual Possum Festival. The event is widely regarded as a “must-attend” event by Florida politicians and other dignitaries, because, lets’ face it, Florida’s kind of bonkers. Be sure to have a heaping helping of their signature dish, possum hash. Mmmm-mmm-good!

— Famously eccentric actor Nicolas Cage may not actually be dead, yet it’s still possible to visit his tomb. It seems that in 2010, Mr. Cage bought the last two unclaimed plots in New Orleans’ famous and crowded St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, final resting place of such historical figures as “Voodoo Queen” Marie Laveau and Etienne de Boré, the city’s first mayor.

Cage, apparently not wanting to get caught unprepared for his eventual demise, scandalized New Orleans traditionalists by constructing his mausoleum in the form of a nine-foot cement pyramid bearing the inscription “Omnia ab Uno.” This means, “All From One,” and not, as you might expect, “I Have More Money Than Sense and Soon Will Have Neither If I Keep Up With This Nonsense.”

If you want to observe some wretched rich-person excess and don’t have ready access to a Kardashian, check this one out.

— South of the border, down Mexico way, you’ll find the Isla de las Munecas, or “Island of the Dolls,” which has to be, bar none, the creepiest thing that I have ever seen described as a “tourist attraction.”

All over the tiny island south of Mexico City, the trees are adorned by dolls and doll parts. Arms. Legs. And of course disembodied doll heads, with those cold dead eyes that seem to follow you as you walk by and oh my God I think I saw that one move, run run run GET TO DA CHOPPAH!

Sorry. But we really are talking El Creepo Grande here. It seems that the old and possibly deranged fellow who once served as the islands caretaker was distraught at finding a young girl drowned on the beach. With the kind of logic that can only be achieved by living alone on a deserted island for many years, he decided to pay a tribute to the dead girl’s spirit by hanging a doll in a tree. Then a few more. Then a lot more. After the old man’s death, locals, then tourists, began bringing their own additions.

Did I mention it was creepy? If I ever find myself paying a visit to this place, I am definitely finding a new travel agent.

“The world is so full of a number of things,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, “I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.” Whatever things your travels may lead you to see this summer, I hope all your trails are happy ones.