Roadside America Honeymoon
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| With scenery like this, you'll have
the most unique honeymoon photo album on your block. |
Go on this honeymoon and you’re sure to
have the most interesting honeymoon photo album on your block. No ocean
sunsets or mountain vistas here. Instead, you’ll come home with pictures
of yourselves in front of the oddest sights the American landscape has
to offer: Wigwam motels, giant talking cow statues, two-story outhouses,
modern-day pyramids and the like. It’s a road-trip honeymoon accompanied
by The New Roadside America, your guide to America’s offbeat, corny, and
sometimes downright weird roadside attractions.
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PLACES TO GO ~ ROMANTIC SPOT
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A trio of guys (Doug
Kirby, Ken Smith, Mike Wilkins) got an itch to see America, especially
those offbeat, homespun tourist attractions—you know, the type
advertised only by a handmade sign along the road, if at all: giant
balls of string, shoe trees, collections of nuts (the edible kind),
toilet seat museums, anti-gravity hills, etc. They collected the fruits
of their travels in Roadside America (1986) and followed up with a
sequel, The New Roadside America, in 1992. They also have a web site,
roadsideamerica.com, at
which you can virtually explore the fruits of their travels (they claim
to have logged some 300,000 miles).
So what you do for your honeymoon is
plan your trip (or not, if you’re truly into the freedom of the open
road) and look up interesting Roadside America destinations in the
general vicinity of your travels. Or take this idea all the way and look
through Roadside America first so you can plan your honeymoon around the
most interesting destinations. (After searching under the term
“honeymoon” on the roadsideamerica.com site, we can testify that you
would not be the first couple to plan their honeymoon around odd tourist
attractions.)
Cost
If you camp and eat cheap, you can
probably do a road trip for less than $100 a day.
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PLACES TO GO ~ ROMANTIC SPOT
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The possibilities are endless; go to
roadsideamerica.com and browse around. Here are just four possibilities:
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Go to the
Hypertours
page
for four possible routes chock-full of interesting sights: a tour of
the Upper Midwest (Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa); Los
Angeles to New York City; New York City to San Francisco; and
Seattle to Montana.
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We’ve actually visited the
Rock
in the House in
Fountain City, Wisconsin. As the name implies, it’s a rock in a
house—make that a 55-ton boulder that fell off a bluff and smashed
into the back of the house in 1995. The owners escaped injury, and
making the best of the situation, turned it into a dollar-a-head
tourist trap (much to the annoyance of the neighbors). The house is
unattended; you just pull up the driveway, drop your dollar into the
collection box, and tour the house on your own. Lots of news
clippings tell of other local disasters (including a fatal
rock-smashes-house accident next door in the early 1900s). Souvenirs
are available on the honor system as well.
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While the Rock in the House is
probably not worth a special trip, it’s only 100 miles from the more
famous House on the Rock. “The House is an architectural marvel
perched on a 60-foot chimney of rock,” says the
House on the
Rock web site. “Begun in the early 1940s, it overlooks the
breathtaking panorama of Wyoming Valley. The 14-room House, sculpted
atop Deer Shelter Rock, is the original structure of what is now an
extraordinary complex of rooms, streets, buildings and gardens
covering over 200 acres. A 375-foot ramp through treetops takes
visitors to the entrance of the House where a bell gallery,
waterfalls, massive fireplaces and walls of rock can be seen.” The
house and its companion buildings are crammed full of dozens of
automated music machines, flying mannequins, a 269-piece carousel,
chandeliers, an animated 200-foot-long sea monster, giant organs, a
dollhouse collection—well, you get the idea. Book yourself at the
House on the Rock Inn or the House on the Rock Resort and you can
spend your whole honeymoon here.
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If you’ve always wanted to tour the
great ruins of ancient Greece but didn’t have the money, head to
Nashville, Tennessee, instead. That’s where they built a full-scale
replica of the Parthenon in 1897, complete with a 42-foot statue of
the goddess Athena. As some say in Nashville, it’s just like the
real thing, only better, ‘cause it’s newer.
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PLACES TO GO ~ ROMANTIC SPOT
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Roadside America offers many
suggestions for interesting romantic spots on their
Road Guide to
Romance page, but we
vote for the Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno, California. Over
a period of some 40 years (1905-1946), Sicilian immigrant Baldasare
Forestiere dug a subterranean network of more than one hundred rooms,
passageways, courtyards, and niches—including a chapel—using nothing but
hand tools. Skylights and courtyards let in sunlight and rainwater for
numerous fruit trees. The project was inspired by unrequited love,
according to Roadside America, but that romantic angle on the gardens
isn’t repeated by the Forestiere Underground Gardens official web site.
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PLACES TO GO ~ ROMANTIC SPOT
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roadsideamerica.com
The
massive website for the book by the same name. The best place to start
navigating the site is the
Welcome Center,
which describes what you’ll find in various sections of the site.
Forestiere Underground
Gardens
The official web site for the Forestiere Underground
Gardens; you’ll find a better description and pictures at
Roadtrip
America’s web site, though.
House on the Rock:
The official web site.
Nashville Parthenon:
The official site.
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PLACES TO GO ~ ROMANTIC SPOT
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The New Roadside America
Doug Kirby, Ken Smith, Mike Wilkins
Touts itself as “the modern traveler’s guide to
the wild and wonderful world of America’s tourist attractions.”
Attractions are divided up by category: animals, celebrities, science
and medicine, foreign places recreated in the USA, history, claims to
civic pride, meccas, and so on. The index categorizes attractions by
state. (© 1992 Fireside Press, 288 pages)
Eccentric America
Jan Friedman
One of many Roadside America imitations;
use its nearly one thousand entries to supplement Roadside America.
(© 2001 Bradt Travel Guides, 376 pages)
Offbeat Museums: The Collections and Curators of
America's Most Unusual Museums
Saul Rubin
In between visiting giant fruit statues and shoe
trees with Roadside America, visit the Banana Museum in California or
the Shoe Museum in Pennsylvania, or four dozen other offbeat museums.
From the book: “This book presents 50 of the most offbeat museums in
America, institutions that defy conventional wisdom by their very
existence.” (© 1997 Santa Monica Press, 237 pages)
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PLACES TO GO ~ ROMANTIC SPOT
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Your honeymoon story
Have you done this
trip (whether on your honeymoon or other travel)? We'd love to hear
about your experience so we can share it with others. . .just
drop us a line.
Last Updated:
March 4, 2004 |
