36 replies to this topic

[Jace]

Pedro's South of the Border is a huge piece of crap in the middle of nowhere off I-95 in South Carolina. It's famous for looking like it has suffered the apocalypse and for the 100+ billboards that say stuff like this:


It has a motel and a diner and a wedding chapel. I've driven by it probably a dozen times at various times of the year and have never seen any of the rides in operation, or even any people walking around. Apparently it's open, though.

What are some shitty laughingstock type things in your region, or that you've been to/passed by?

[Nick The Newbie]

I've driven by that a couple times. The person riding with me told me how much of a tourist trap it is.

[raubhimself]

If you've driven down I-95 anywhere from VA to who knows how far south you've probably seen billboards for South of the Border.

My family vacations as a kid were on the southern edge of NC so tracking these signs was always a good gauge of how far we were. Sadly I never made it to the promised land

The north side of AZ is pretty barren, but the I-40 goes across there. When I moved here, the portion of the I-40 I took in northern AZ was nothing except tourist traps for Native American trinkets.

[mercatfat]

i have a good few of these, but to start:

FUCK THIS PLACE.

it's in South Dakota, and when I went there in roughly 1995 or so, it was as pretty on the outside as you see above. which is very pretty!

the murals on the outside are, shockingly, made of corn. they're really elaborate and detailed and totally great.

so what's inside? a small gallery of pictures of the Corn Palace, then what is essentially a tourist trap flea market full of third-world-produced generic neon animal dolls and other random junky chotskies that have pretty much zero to do with the Corn Palace itself. they didn't even have a logo on them!

even as a kid, i was totally let down by this place after picking up so much literature about it on a road trip i had as a kid from Michigan to Seattle in a Ryder truck with my Dad. thankfully, there was another museum nearby that DIDN'T suck:

the Enchanted World Doll Museum was basically just a ton of staged doll dioramas, but the ornateness and overall quality was through the freaking roof. crazy levels of detail made each individual display, of which they had many, totally unique and beautiful.

apparently it may be closed forever now, which is really sad.

[Jace]

The corn mural of the person being pushed in a wheelchair gave me quite the confused laugh.

[trunkspace]

I'm a HUGE roadside attraction fan.
When I went to "find myself" in 1999 I plotted my road trip by what the next closest site was--okay, so I'm not Jack Kerouac.
That being said, I missed all of the big ones except Rock City.

Anyone ever theen to AZ's The Thing?

[kareshi]

DINOSAUR LAND! Here in Virginia. For all your fiberglass, proportionally questionable dinosaur needs!

[MegaMatt]

how come i'm a SC native and i've never heard of this place?? hell i don't even know where I-95 is. is that a bizarro I-85? Jace do you never come by my area and want to hang out?

[Paragon]

once when i was like 7 years old my family stopped there on a trip to south carolina

they only had two quarters so i didn't get to spend very long in the arcade

god damn it

[BornInCrimson]

Wall Drug is pretty much the ultimate one, although it's so good in its own way that it might not belong in this thread. Giant jackalopes, fiberglass dinos and cowboys.

[mercatfat]

Wall Drug was the next one I was going to whip out. i definitely recall that the first freeway sign that I saw for it was the 1000 mile mark.

counting the signs was one of the activities i relished on the trip. well, that and the fact that my parents bought a wrapped cluster of 14-odd Power Rangers coloring books and i received one of them every day of the trip.

in a pretty weird coincidence, we met this married couple somewhere around Iowa or so when two of our tires blew out and we were stuck in some small one-street town that just so happened to have a repair shop that could handle a Ryder truck. i'm not sure how conversation started, but i had mentioned my excitement over the Wall Drug to them and we then compared notes over how many signs we counted. the coincidence comes in when my Dad and I arrived at Wall Drug a few days later, they had arrived there just minutes before we did. We talked some more and ate ice cream and it was cute. keep in mind that all of this was before the age of cell phones or other easy communication devices, so this wasn't some planned event. it genuinely did just happen by happenstance.

Wall Drug itself? definitely a letdown after getting hype for it after all the signs. but the ice cream was really, really good!

[OverCoat]

I went all over central/eastern Washington recently on a road trip. Here's another dinosaur land... In Granger, WA!

And here's me being all touristey at the Grand Coulee Dam


I went back later that night and they had the cheesiest laser light show projected onto the dam. BEHOLD MY POWER, I AM THE COLUMBIA RIVER and then it was a big shill for the energy company and a basic history of the columbia basin project. They had little music breaks where they played like, Chariots of Fire, and then Jean Michelle Jarre's Equinoxe I... haha!

[weener]

The old man got me into doing this, as he said above. It makes road trips a hilarious good time.


University of Arizona Lumberjack


The Loretto Chapel in Santa Fe (the staircase was supposedly built by Jesus or Saint Joseph but actually wasn't if you look into it)


Tucson Muffler Man


Hi Jolly Tomb, Quartzsite

[OverCoat]

why are those two statues just palette-swaps of each other? wtf?

[weener]

Muffler Men are basically all the same.