Guidelines for Tip Submission

We love to get tips from you. Your keen eyes and descriptive powers can lead to new places that everyone can then enjoy on RoadsideAmerica.com. Not all tips are posted, as we try to stay focused on the most offbeat attractions. We appreciate all of your suggestions, since they help us to shape what is and isn't "Roadside-caliber" in the places we include and add to our maps.

General Guidelines

• Don't copy text from other sources (wikipedia, official attraction web pages, etc.) and don't send us a story already published on your own blog or a review you submitted on another site (such as Yelp).
• Write about what you saw, heard or smelled when you visited -- interesting observations, things other travelers should watch for. Has anything substantially changed since our last tip or story? Search published tips and stories or the maps and state pages to see what's already on the site.
• Tip length 20 - 100 words. No short tips -- "Still There!" or "Closed when we visited" or "couldn't find it," "Lame," "Waste of time," "Amazing." -- are not likely to be posted. Keep tips between 20-100 words; we trim lengthy tips to make them concise for our readers. Tips should add interesting observations or factual details to what we already have.
• Avoid tips that focus on admission complaints. We all have different tolerances for what we'll pay for an experience. One person's "pricey" is another's "bargain!"
• Poorly written tips full of misspellings, or in ALL CAPS, will not be posted.
• New Places: Please provide coordinates, address, directions, and/or cross-streets so we can map it if accepted.
• If your photo is good (even if the tip doesn't qualify), we may post it (with credit to you)

Places We Like

Look around RoadsideAmerica.com and you'll quickly get the idea. If you find a place in your own travels that is odd, outrageous, and is all you talk about when you get home, then it might be something RoadsideAmerica.com readers will find interesting.

This can include: tourist attractions, classic tourist traps, museums, commercial/civic statues that are oversized or ludicrous, historical markers for bizarre events or claims to fame, graves and memorials, unexplained phenomena, unusual natural features (rocks, trees, terrain, etc), unusual buildings, misplaced items (a landlocked submarine, a lighthouse in a desert), folk art environments and yard art.

Yard art should be something large or in large quantities, and permanent (not seasonal). A 3-ft. tall lawn jockey doesn't qualify, but a yard with 50 lawn jockeys might.

Places We DON'T Usually Include

RoadsideAmerica.com is not a comprehensive guide to mainstream travel destinations, museums, zoos, county fairs, events, or guided tours.

• Beautiful
  If "beautiful" is the first word that pops into your mind about a place, then it may not be right for RoadsideAmerica.com. We don't usually include scenic vistas, hiking trails, pretty parks, places of natural wonderfulness, unless there's an oddity in among all that beauty.
• "Normal" Historic Sites/Museums
  We're looking for the unexpected, humorous or strange side of history. We probably won't include a county museum if it doesn't exhibit at least one oddity. Those familiar with the website will know we aren't as interested in railroad museums, old mills, and historic houses, but have a weakness for the space program, nerdy technology, pop culture, crime and punishment, disasters, failed utopias.
• Important, Serious Architecture
  We're not as interested in (most of) Frank Lloyd Wright masterworks, Victorian mansions. But a house that looks like a shoe, or Fred Flintstone's? We're there.
• Restaurants, Diners
  We include eateries with a quirky side -- a roof covered with old stoves, waiters who throw hot rolls at customers, a barbeque in a cave, a cafe shaped like a Hot Dog, etc. We include a handful of odd diners -- the Blob diner, Rosie's TV commercial diner, etc. -- but are not cataloging them all. If you submit a tip about an eatery, please write about what makes it bizarre, not about the servers being slow or the food being cold. Or that it's "pricey." For online spats between restaurants and their customers, please head over to Yelp.
• Haunted Attractions or Sites Where Something Happened
  We try to focus on places that have objects that can be seen and photographed: a plaque, a marker, a ghostly image frozen in a window. Spooky places that can be visited can qualify, but they have to be interesting even if no ghosts are around.
• Ruins and Ghost Towns
  We've added some,if there is an unusual aspect -- weird structures, an unusual history, abandoned tourist attractions.
• Wildlife Sanctuaries, Zoos, Gardens, nature conservatories, nice parks and river walks
  Not strange enough by themselves. Exception examples: a sanctuary for retired circus gorillas, a zoo with an albino animal section or an elephant grave.
• Statues/Sculptures that are smallish, temporary, wheeled in at night, or mass produced (think Elvis, Blues Brothers, even that Hot Dog Guy squirting himself with mustard). Too common, too likely to move for us to keep up with 'em!
• Funny Signs
  They make us laugh, too, but we map sights for travelers to go out of their way to visit, and often bad spelling or an unintended turn of phrase isn't quite enough....

We do not publish attractions that require trespassing on private property.

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