Winging It
The earthbound have always envied the untethered possibilities of flight. Sticking a pair of wings on anything is a way to get our attention. This approach has taken two very different routes with the Airplane Filling Station in hill-constrained Tennessee, and the Butterfly House in leisure-time California. The Filling Station is a Depression Folly, built of oil and steel, a classic of lookit-that-pull-over roadside architecture. The Butterfly House is Flower Child Whimsy, residential yard art with day-glo dazzle, irresistible to human caterpillars. Their respective creators would probably disagree about almost everything, but not the traffic-stalling power of wings.
Airplane Filling Station
Butterfly House
*****
Confusion Hill
This weirdo attraction only gets better with age. Confusion Hill offers a redwood forest train ride, a gravity-defying mystery shack, a shoe house, a triangle dream demon, and over-explanatory signs everywhere. Story
Birthplace of Kentucky Fried Chicken
The working KFC inside Colonel Sanders' first restaurant harbors a mini-museum with exhibits, relics, and restorations of 1940s-vintage rooms... including the kitchen where the secret formula was applied to breasts, thighs, drumsticks and wings. Story
Nuts in Your Mail
The best reason to visit Hoolehua on the island of Molokai (aside from it being in Hawaii) is its U.S. Post Office, where anyone can mail anyone else a free coconut. Story
Dog-Gone Daisy
Daisy the dog died over 80 years ago, but she's enjoying a lengthy afterlife in an Indiana museum. A recent trip to the taxidermy spa freshened Daisy's look for 2018. Story
Pistachio Goliath
The World's Largest Pistachio Nut, 30 feet high, was built in tribute to an Alamogordo pistachio farmer -- who loved visiting big roadside attractions.
Story
Dreams in Cowtopia
Cows are docile creatures, but is their meek facade hiding crazy dreams? That’s the premise behind Cowtopia, a mini-golf course of bovine fantasies in Virginia. Story
Grave Expressions
Inside one of Atlanta's oldest cemeteries, see the mausoleum statue of jaunty Jack Smith, and the unhappy marble Lion of the Dead Confederacy. Story
*****
Trunkations Blog: Binocular Viewers
They give you super-vision. They've been built by the same company since 1933. They’re indestructible and unforgettable... and no one really knows what they're called. Story
*****
Enjoy your wings,
The RoadsideAmerica.com Team
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