News from the offbeat tourist attraction landscape of Roadside America.
Sightings Vol. 9, No. 7 October 16, 2013

Scarier Than Skeletons

Which is more terrifying: a house draped in skeletons, or a horror show of a government that shuts down the Museum of the Air Force and the Trinity Atom Bomb site? It seems the ideological undead in Washington know what spooks us, leading us to conclude that this month has been one, long, unfunny Halloween prank.

But escape political gridlock for a moment. Drive your car through the barricades. Get out of the Beltway!

Visit Lincoln's Haircut Chair to remember how great leaders trim entrenched bureaucracies and their own shaggy excesses.

Envision a cooperative, one-world future at Prabhupada's Palace of Gold (It's hard to stay mad at each other when you're chanting).

Gain a fresh perspective on upturns and downturns at the Santa Cruz Mystery Spot.

And if you were hoping to see a WWII bomber with skull eye machine guns, you'll have to wait until the National Museum of the US Air Force reopens. There are some things only the government can provide.

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Brawny Men of San Francisco Bay

Hayward Cowboy.Alarms go off in our monitoring stations whenever Muffler Men gravitate towards each other. In California, birthplace of the Muffler Men, a pair of fiberglass giants are cohabiting.

In other California M-Men news, LA's adored golf giant has been reborn as a Porsche Motorsport driver holding a checkered flag.

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Spotted by Tipsters

Succulent globe.Kim Wheeler sniffed out this 14-foot-wide rotating Earth made out of succulent plantings, a heavenly spectacle that's probably hell to weed.

Walter White descanso.Breaking Bad, everyone's favorite TV show (until The Walking Dead reappeared), featured sights around Albuquerque, which the city has gleefully promoted to fans. Wm Breiland reports the final one: a genuine descanso at the site where fictional Walter White met his series-ending demise.

Surfquatch.A good discovery for frequent roadside tipster Phrank Phester: this pair of chainsawed Bigfoots, each carrying a surfboard and running toward a nearby beach. Phrank pointed out that he'd seen many Bigfoot carvings in the Pacific Northwest, but never one like this.

Check out more discoveries in the very Latest Tips.

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Field Fresh

They said no one would even slow down for these landmarks. They were so wrong!

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Tourism News

See-Thru BathroomThe USA's only public bathroom with see-thru walls is one of the finalists in the 2013 America's Best Restroom award. We've featured previous winners in Texas and Ohio.

Tesla Statue.Overlooked in life, Nikola Tesla is honored with a new statue in New York (at the site of his old laboratory) -- just another of a growing list of belated memorials to everyone's favorite mad scientist.

Playboy art.A Playboy neon bunny in Marfa, Texas, is causing problems for the nearby Prada art fake store: the state Dept of Transportation now wants both of them demolished. The bunny is the worse offender of the two; its glare is washing out the Marfa Mystery Lights.

Get more info about these and other breaking news stories on the Roadside America Twitter feed.

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Animatronic skeleton arms wave bye bye,
The RoadsideAmerica.com Team

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Main image: Skull guns at the Museum of the Air Force, Dayton, Ohio