Roadside Attractions

I happened upon my first roadside attraction (the Odessa, Texas Jack Rabbit) by chance while driving to my brother’s track meet in 2001. I was instantly taken by the novelty, humor, and tackiness of a large rabbit statue situated on a city street in a rural West Texas town. The following year my grandmother gifted me my late grandfather’s car. My friend Todd and I flew down to Florida to collect it. I recalled the Odessa rabbit and wondered what tourist trap oddities dotted the highway along the route back home.

In the days before smart phones and GPS, I printed off dozens of pages of loose directions to a collection of sites that would lead us (eventually) home. The World’s Largest Peanut right off I-75 in Ashburn, Georgia is a lover’s lane of sorts for local teens. A gazebo next to the peanut was littered used condoms and even a discarded vibrator. Also in Georgia, a Kentucky Fried Chicken shaped like one, complete with moving and rotating googly eyes. A customer offered to take our Polaroid in front of the sign and asked if we would do the same for him. When the photo developed the man beamed and said “Can’t wait to show my mom this.”

Todd and I came home with more stories from the three days on the road bouncing around attraction to attraction than the previous week spent hanging out on the beach. And an obsession was born. With the following summer came the first preplanned road trip from Ohio to Texas with Leeta and Christopher. Over the next twenty years I’ve travelled the country dozens of times visiting over 700 sites across 49 states (you’re next Alaska).

During my travels I’ve had the privilege of seeing some pretty spectacular outsider art such as The Orange Show in Houston; Randyland in Pittsburgh; and Salvation Mountain in the California desert.

Below are links to some of my favorite sites from each state.

Todd and I on the road in 2002.