High Country’s Roadside Attractions
Roadside attractions add charm and imagination to vacation photos. From giant dinosaurs to massive cooking utensils, roadside attractions provide unique stops that enrich your drive while breaking up long road journeys.
Lucy the Elephant stands six stories tall in Jersey City and serves both as a real estate office and bar, earning New Jersey Historic Landmark status and National Historic Site designations in 2014.
Cabazon Dinosaurs
Roadside attractions add an eye-catching flair to road trip photos and give travelers something memorable to post about on social media. From Boise’s Big Idaho Potato to Alamogordo’s World’s Largest Pistachio, these iconic stops make driving much more entertaining!
The Cabazon Dinosaurs are an iconic California landmark and must-sees for anyone traveling near Palm Springs. Formerly known as Claude Bell’s Dinosaurs, these 150-foot Apatosaurus (formerly Brontosaurus) and Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaurs have long been welcoming motorists and entertaining children for decades. Visible from Highway 22, drivers have ample opportunities to capture pictures of these massive creatures!
Huell Howser once described them as “quintessential roadside Americana,” and they’ve since made appearances everywhere from Coke commercials and MTV videos to the movie Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. The dinosaurs offer relief in the scorching desert heat along Route 10.
Bell spent eleven years creating Dinny and Mr. Rex using concrete and scrap from construction sites as building materials. Although he intended on creating another dinosaur, unfortunately he passed away before completion was possible.
Once Bell died, his dinosaurs were purchased by a joint venture of locals and Costa Mesa businessmen who purchased and changed them into the Cabazon Dinosaurs with an on-site gift shop within Dinny.
As well as its souvenir shop, this attraction also boasts a sand pit where visitors can participate in a dinosaur dig and look for gemstones and fossils. Kids will especially love exploring an interactive play area featuring real fossils and dinosaur bones!
The dinosaurs can be found daily from 9am to 5pm at Cabazon off exit 113 of Interstate 10. Adult admission costs $14 while kids under the age of two enter for free. For more information, visit their website.
The Blue Whale
Road trips have made a comeback thanks to trendy playlists, retro snacks and the social media phenomenon of caravaning with friends – this storied American tradition remains trendy today. Exploring natural landscapes, epic mountaintop vistas and dynamic public art are always rewarding experiences; adding some offbeat roadside fun can only enhance any trip further!
Arizona, with its open spaces and celebrated Route 66 heritage, boasts some classic roadside attractions. Cadillac Ranch, a car graveyard created by artist Larry Eicher in 1974 with assistance from fellow artists and “cartists”, should not be missed by road warriors. Cadillac Ranch showcases vehicles such as an elaborately decorated VW Beetle featuring googly eyes or even an old school bus decorated like a dragon – these unique pieces of roadside artwork deserve your consideration when passing through Arizona!
Wall Drug Dinosaur of Arizona should not be missed! This full-sized concrete brachiosaurus should be on any road tripper’s must-see list, especially those traveling with children. Wall Drug is a wildly popular attraction featuring western wear stores, souvenir shops, restaurants and an extraordinary playground; additionally there’s the unique jackalope as a photo op, not to mention free ice water to quench traveler thirst!
If you’re familiar with Ghost Adventures, the Goldfield Hotel in Colorado may look familiar. This creepy structure featured in an episode back in 2004 when host Zak Bagans experienced being startled by something supernatural.
Goldfield Hotel boasts a haunting cemetery. Here lies former miners, soldiers, saloon owners, sheriff’s deputies, firemen and an old man – many have found rest here after leaving this worldly realm behind them. Visitors have reported hearing mysterious voices or experiencing haunting visions at this haunted spot of rest.
Salvation Mountain in Nevada provides a spiritual roadside experience like no other. Created as a tribute to God by born-again Christian Leonard Knight over 30 years of painting this roadside attraction, its vibrant colors stand as testament to this spiritual landmark.
The World’s Largest Ball of Twine
Roadside attractions provide unique experiences that make any trip memorable, from nostalgic, kitschy and even hokey sights and experiences, to those which add a dash of humor into vacation photos and serve as meme-inducing memes. Roadside attractions often become hallmarks of character for towns, like North Dakota’s Wall Drug or Alamogordo’s World’s Largest Pistachio in New Mexico – roadside attractions can provide something memorable every step of the way!
Cawker City’s giant ball of twine is one of the more offbeat tourist sites in Kansas. In fact, its presence made headlines nationwide when The Atlantic sent a team to measure and evaluate four places that claimed to have the world’s largest ball. Their report revealed that Cawker City ball weighs nearly 40,000 pounds with a circumference exceeding 36 feet!
Frank Stoeber became disenchanted with all of the twine lying around his barn during the 1950s. Instead of collecting and burning it outside, he decided to roll it into a ball as his way of thanking all of the farmers who supported him and giving back in kind. Over time, locals and tourists have added thousands of pieces to it, turning it into a beloved town symbol and quickly growing to enormous proportions.
“Weird Al” Yankovic wrote his road trip anthem The Biggest Ball of Twine following a 1986 review of Roadside America by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, drawing upon lyrics such as, “Twine ball, twine ball… how do you spell love?” which helped propel twine balls even further and bring even more fans to this small Kansas town.
Each year, volunteers inspect and repair the ball to ensure its integrity, while in August visitors and residents alike are invited to add more twine to this iconic monument during a twine-a-thon.
Cawker City’s historic downtown features an intricate network of twisty twine trailed around a twine ball. This trail leads to nearby storefronts featuring iconic paintings enhanced with twine balls; some examples include The Scream, American Gothic and Van Gogh’s Starry Night (twine version) to name just a few! Don’t miss Eyegore’s Curiosities & Monster Museum located just up the street!
The Corn Palace
Billboards promoting Mitchell, South Dakota along Interstate 90 may have announced the presence of the World’s Only Corn Palace – and indeed it is! This towering structure looks as though an earthquake struck Moscow’s Kremlin before depositing parts into South Dakota prairie land as multicolored ears of corn decorate walls adorned with domes and turrets as multi-story murals depict various sights and scenes throughout South Dakota.
The Corn Palace stands as a monument to agriculture and tourist attraction for any town that hosts it, while also serving as an opportunity to show local pride. Since it opened over 120 years ago, no changes have taken place with regard to its charm or functionality.
Each year a different theme is selected, and artists design murals. Farmers then nail 275,000 or so ears of corn onto the building to form scenes and scenes – usually beginning in June when rye, wheat, milo and sour dock can be harvested – for decoration of the building and remaining until late August or September (when new crops become available) when it will be taken down and replaced by newly harvested crops.
Past themes have featured cowboy heroes, explorers and pioneers, American historical figures, the frontier, Plains flora and fauna as well as Egyptian (1911) and Dutch (1920) influences. Additionally, visitors can view Wayne Porter’s collection of whimsical metal sculptures scattered throughout a grassy park adjacent to the corn palace.
Though it may appear bizarre, Mitchell’s Corn Palace is an engaging roadside attraction that is great fun for the whole family and makes for an intriguing photo op. You might not even notice its existence otherwise unless someone told you about it; once seen though, once done you’ll want to come back! Just bring along a camera; snapping photos will help with social media vacation posts!