Weird Travel -- Day-Tripping Through The Twilight Zone

"THE JOURNEY IS THE TRIP," some wise sort like Confucious once said. And he must've been thinking about hitting the summer road. But what to see?

Dull historical sights and tedious vistas? Ack! A lovely mountain stream is fine for a minute, but then what? Is there a laser show later? A stuffed two-headed calf nearby? What are we still doing here?

Well, don't worry. After childhoods spent as unwilling captives on summertime trips to the Grand Canyon, Disneyworld and countless living Colonial towns ("Look, kids, they're dipping candles") we decided that enough was enough. Along with our pal, Ken Smith, we have spent the past 10 years seeking out and exploring odd-ball, off-beat and often weird vacation destinations: Alligator farms, giant peanut statues, the world's largest twine balls. Stuff you can really write home about.

The country's best are garishly celebrated in our books "Roadside America" (from 1986) and "New Roadside America" (out this summer).

Recently we left Seattle on a six-day, 3,000-mile journey that proves the Northwest is Chock-Full-of-Nuts jammed with great stuff. The excuse we made to our homebound wives was that we just had to see the fabled "Oxen Statue That Pees," in Three Forks, Mont. But by rising early, not stopping at dusk and driving as fast as the law allows, we managed to visit 50 other skewed attractions.

Next time you're on the highway don't bypass the weird for the wonderful.

DAY 1

We start with a tiny paper cup of courage at Archie McPhee's Tiki Hut in Seattle. The espresso is great. So is the display case full of rubber fish classified by real ichthyologists! Next door, at Archie's nationally unique dry-goods boutique, we fill our trunk with mandrill masks and radiation suits. You never know when you'll need these.

I-90 East leads us to the Carnation Research Farm in Carnation. This pastoral panorama is home of the World's Champion Milk Cow Statue. During the 1920s, Segis Pietertje Prospect's yearly yield exceeded 16,500 quarts of milk and 1,400 pounds of butter - 10 times that of the average cow. Awed owners note on a plaque that cows "Nobly deserve the title, `Foster Mother of The Human Race.' "

Next stop, Snoqualmie and North Bend, television's "Twin Peaks" towns. But how quickly we forget. The Big Log, its 18 tons resting under the Snoqualmie Historic Log Pavilion, is these days nude of visitors.

North Bend's Mar-T Cafe still sells its Warhol-famous cherry pies and coffee, but mainly to regulars. At the drug store, fireplace logs, with tags identifying them as "Official Log Lady Logs," sit in a pile and gather dust. Worst of all, the place now sells "Northern Exposure" paraphernalia.

In nearby Roslyn, television's "Northern Exposure" town, things are hopping. Landmarks like The Oasis and The Brick suck scores of neon-warmup-suited tourists from their RVs. Stores in which actual filming takes place have aisles blocked off with strips of crime-site yellow "Hot Set" tape. In the souvenir-buying lines, cottonball-head old ladies ahead of us discuss local sales-tax differentials with the counter help, while our espresso-massaged forebrains give us little interest in the subject.

Back on the road to Ellensburg, "Gateway To The Channeled Scablands." Here, at the corner of First Avenue and North Pearl, we find Dick and Jane's Art Spot. This private residence is home to an array of brightly painted wooden figures, bicycle-wheel sculptures and bottle-cap tesserae. "Big Red," a pink woman with road-reflector breasts, beckons near a man with a flashbulb-camera face. As we leave Ellensburg, we see our first camcorder-wielding Dad, like the first robin of spring, videotaping his children going into the Super 8 motel office.

The flat drive toward George, Washington gives us plenty of time to imagine what funny civic permutations await us there. But the town doesn't get its own joke. Instead of dressing the residents in powdered wigs, or having any kind of photo opportunity that spells out the gag in no uncertain terms (like a billboard with a hole cut for your head, making you look like a termite in a giant set of George's wooden teeth), all we see at the city limits is a sign reading, "Welcome to town of George." What? They do sell postcards of the world's largest cherry pie, baked in 1983, at the chamber of commerce. But, man, what a disappointment.

One of us (his name is Doug) wants to go north and see the windmills made of household items in Electric City, and stay for the laser show on the side of the Grand Coulee Dam. But the other one (his name is Mike) thinks we will waste too much time waiting for darkness to fall before the laser show and if we go south, we'll not only see more, we'll make it to Spokane before dark to see its stuff too.

South we go. Loser chooses music. Since we have to proceed with all the speed that the law allows, Doug unzips his complete collection of Hawkwind tapes and pops in the live version of "Sonic Attack." Hawkwind, an early '70s British space-rock band that still performs, never did ballads and their songs often end in explosions.

Two hours later, at the Hanford Science Center in Richland, we learn about the nearby Hanford Site, a Manhattan Project boom town that once produced plutonium for atomic bombs. But the science center focuses on "don't panic" education, with computer games like "Learn Your Personal Radiation Dose?" Brochures teach us that "radiation is emitted by earth, water, food ... Radiation also comes from human-generated sources such as color TV sets, medical procedures and nuclear-weapons production."

Make this stop worthwhile by visiting B, B & M Sporting Goods for a cool Richland High School T-shirt. Sports teams there are called "The Bombers;" the logo features a billowing mushroom cloud. B, B & M usually sells about 30 a week, "But if the DOE (Department of Energy) boys are in town, they just fly out of the store."

At the Whitman Massacre Site Interpretive Center, just west of Walla Walla, politically correct forces have reshaped the old dioramas of Dr. Marcus Whitman and his wife, Narcissa, futilely running from tomahawk-wielding attackers, into a scene where food is peacefully exchanged between the couple and their culturally distinct neighbors. Only the recorded messages outside hint at the tourism-rich horror of the 1847 massacre that left 13 dead, buried together in the "Great Grave" at the bottom of the Whitman Monument hill.

We speed along highways 12 and 127 between rolling green hills - Gaia's attractive pagan buttocks - toward Colfax. Signs quickly direct us to the Codger Pole, a 65-foot tall chainsaw sculpture commemorating a 1988 high-school football rematch - played 50 years after the first game between Colfax High School and St. John High School. The pole is actually a fagot of five separate wooden columns, with the heads of all the golden-aged players carved into them. Town fathers have done a great job displaying and publicizing the Codger Pole, perhaps because town fathers are the very people portrayed.

Daytime visitors to Spokane can see the Milk Bottle-shaped Building at Post and Garland streets, or a Check Signed by George Bush on the wall of Patsy Clark's restaurant.

DAY 2

We've got a lot to see today, so before sun up we're heading east on I-90, we see the first of many billboards for "Lincoln's World Famous 10,000 Silver $." Then "Leaving Apple Maggot Quarantine Area" and "Celebrate Idaho With Us."

Next, "Willkommen zu Kellogg," and Kellogg's Bavarian-themed Area. Bavarian concrete highway dividers and painted Teutonic trim abound, but it lacks the critical mass to pull off the illusion. More cogent to Kellogg's heritage are Miner's Hat Realty, a building shaped like a big miner's hard hat, complete with giant carbide lamp, and the Sunshine Mine Disaster Memorial, commemorating the 91 people who perished during a 1972 mine fire. A statue of a miner holding high a rock drill guards dozens of impromptu headstones. At the nearby Sunshine Mining Company headquarters, the happy Sunshine Miner Family Statue visually changes the subject.

Wallace, Idaho, used to be famous as the home of the Only Stoplight on I-90, until uncaring road builders finished the overpass around town, and finished the town's claim to fame. But the town was not so easily dissuaded. They had a grand funeral for the stoplight, putting it in a coffin, and had a horse-drawn hearse carry it as a bagpipe band played. Now, a sign at the old site gives directions to the Wallace Mining Museum, where the light can still be seen, resting in its coffin.

Idaho quickly becomes Montana, and Haugan's well-advertised Lincoln's World Famous 10,000 Silver $ looms. We wish we could, but we cannot recommend a stop. More than 25,000 silver dollars do adorn this bar, embedded into the counter, and on all the walls as well. But really, that's it. Run in, if you must, take a short peek, then head to the front and "Montana's Largest Gift Shop" for souvenirs.

We are behind schedule but before long we screech into Missoula. M.C., a high-school friend of Doug's, meets us at the local KFC and offers us a personal four-hour tour of the fascinating historic architecture of the downtown area. We ask him instead for the one place he'd take a friend who had only 15 minutes to live, and suddenly we're off and running into the basement of the Wilma Theater for a gander at the Chapel of the Dove. For 15 years, owners Ed (human) and Koro (pigeon) have curated this shrine to all the entertainment greats who have visited Missoula. The chapel itself has 105 seats, and weddings are regularly performed for couples who don't mind life-sized posters of Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable behind the altar.

The Big Stack can be seen miles before you arrive in Anaconda. At 585 feet tall, it is the country's tallest smokestack - the Washington Monument could fit inside it - and it used to belch lead and arsenic over residents. In 1980, smelting operations closed, and the stack was threatened with demolition. Proud Anacondans banded together, and the stack was saved, becoming a Montana State Park. Only now the Federal Department of Environmental Protection has fenced it off, saying that the site leaks arsenic.

Overregulation also rears its ugly head in Butte, where misguided ordinances prohibit drinking its turbid tap water until at least 1993. But it doesn't quench our enthusiasm for two local attractions, the Our Lady Of The Rockies Statue, and the Berkeley Pit.

At 90 feet tall, Our Lady of the Rockies is America's largest Madonna. She looks down from atop the continental divide, some 3,500 feet above the city. To see her up close, find the Lady of the Rockies Center, in an abandoned church on Main Street. We wait with other zealots until its one tour bus comes down from the mountain. Then we make a two-hour pilgrimage. We remember that patience is a virtue, and are glad the espresso is out of our system.

The Berkeley Pit, a huge terraced hole, 1 1/2 miles long and 1,800 feet deep, is right there in the middle of town. It was once the Nation's Largest Truck Operated Open Pit Copper Mine, but operations ceased in 1982, taking with it much of the local livelihood. The visitor's center is still open, though. The town's best postcard image is the one taken over Our Lady's shoulder, the dead pit below her.

Quietly nestled to the north along I-15 are the towns of Boulder and Basin, headquarters for the healthful radon industry. Arthritics, asthmatics, diabetics and those with hormone imbalances travel from all over to sit in abandoned uranium mines, and soak up the therapeutic aura.

At the Sunshine Radon Mine in Boulder, for example, a walk to the end of this "Open 24 Hours" tunnel leads us into a large exposed-rock game room. Here, visitors casually play cards and Chinese checkers while bathing in the rays. We when walked in, they all turned in surprise, as if they had been waiting down here since the apocalypse, and were stunned to see more survivors.

We also visit Boulder's Radon Tunnel, Basin's Earth Angel and the crowded queen of the mines, the Merry Widow. Unique keepsakes include Radon Pillows, allowing you to take home that healing feeling. Sorry, pregnant women are not allowed in the tunnels!

Big Sky Country gives us enough daylight to get to the forests west of Helena, for a stop at Frontier Town. Frontier Town is the creation of the late John Quigley, who more than 33 years ago single-handedly built this collection of buildings, statuary and artifacts. It features the largest single log bar in the world; its barstools are saddles. One-man constructions are like improv comedy - coming with a built-in excuse for mediocrity - but Frontier Town manages to chin the bar.

DAY 3

The next day begins with a sunrise visit to the intersection of 287 and I-90 in Three Forks, and that obscure object of our desire, The Oxen Statue That Pees. In the distance, a cement plant bellows white steam like a geyser. But our attention is focused on "New Faithful," at home in front of The Prairie Schooner Restaurant. New Faithful is one of the two 12-foot oxen statues that appear to be pulling the restaurant. When the cashier inside sees us admiring them, she turns a secret handle - and "New Faithful" pees! Regulars leave their guests outside, rush in, and excitedly demand, "Turn him on!"

"Club Foot" George's Club Foot is the Virginia City Museum's most popular exhibit. It was exhumed from the town's Boot Hill to prove that George Lane was one of the four outlaws lynched in 1863 by an overzealous citizen's coalition. Gnarly, swaddled in burlap, and sealed relic-like in a snowglobesque glass cylinder, it's one of the few displayed American body parts that gets its own postcard.

We race south on highway 87 into Idaho, avoiding Yellowstone and the Tetons. 'Bagos and sleepy weekend sportsmen clog the roads in these afflicted areas. The way they drive, you'd think there's some kind of law against drinking coffee in this part of the world.

Rexburg, Idaho, is the site of the Teton Flood Museum. The museum is housed in a former Church of Latter Day Saints, salvaged after a nine-foot wall of water from the Teton Dam's 1976 rupture turned Rexburg into Mudville. The museum is a disappointment - housing only a few mud-caked mementos, photoboards, and a dam model along with dull antediluvian Rexburgabilia. You can buy bottles of "Flood Mud" and "Dam Dirt" at the gift counter, though.

Nearby Rigby was the boyhood home of TV's Dad, Philo Farnsworth, and signs at the city limits proclaim it "The Birthplace of Television." The town museum is located in an old bank building, and the vault enshrines its most precious artifacts - a collection of old TV tubes, a bronze bust of Farnsworth, and some of his personal items and awards. Volunteer Alice Lufkin, 86, went to high school with Philo, and adds startling tales of her famous classmate: "He liked to play the violin." Farnsworth was inspired plowing a potato field, the parallel rows triggering his notion of television scan lines.

More big potato ideas are explained in Blackfoot, where the World Potato Exposition pays homage to the mighty spud. See the world's largest concrete potato, and the world's largest potato chip, a 25-inch Pringle donated by Proctor and Gamble. Ponder the burlap tuxedo worn by the first Potato Commissioner, or the "Potato In Space." The Expo plans to add a simulated potato cellar with authentic smells!

Uncontaminated dust billows from the road as we screech into Atomic City, Idaho. More than 50 reactors have been built nearby, but today only 25 people live in this flat, isolated ghost-town-to-be. As we explore the streets in our radiation suits, two patrons come out of the combination bar/post office/gas station and do not kill us.

Instead, they recommend the tour of nearby Arco's Experimental Breeder Reactor. This was the World's First Nuclear Power Plant. Picnic tables are thoughtfully provided under a pair of house-sized experimental atomic jet engines.

On to Shoshone Ice Caves, just north of Shoshone, Idaho. A hairy savage clings to a bright green dinosaur statue at the entrance. The cave's rare underground ice accumulation allows for figure-skating photos in its brochure. But the hot air constantly let in by tourists makes the actual ice along the cave floor unskateably sloppy. The cave is pleasantly cold, though not very extensive, and there are no old people playing Chinese checkers at the end.

The sun plummets, and so do we - south to Twin Falls and Evel Knievel's Snake River Jumpsite. Evel's unsuccessful 1974 attempt to jump across the Snake River Canyon in a rocket-powered motorcycle is noted by a small monument in the visitor's center parking lot. The still-extant jump ramp, a big earthen blob, is visible two miles up river.

The drive from Twin Falls to Boise is just as well made at night.

DAY 4

We careen into Eastern Oregon - our database depressingly thin for the next 300 miles. A stop in Vail for a souvenir photo in front of the Bates Motel is a quick diversion. Soda and dried meat snacks sustain us as we head east across another bleak scabland, entering the Living Video Game of Route 26. Every few seconds, for miles and miles, tiny brown rodents dart across the highway. We swerve, brake, accelerate, brake - we have no idea what'll they'll do next. Dozens scurry at the same trajectory, while others reverse course, or just raise up and stare at our tires. Amazingly, we didn't hit a single fella.

In Prineville, we re-enter civilization. A patrolman offers this travel tip: If you must speed, keep it under eighty, to avoid the heavy fines in Oregon, a state without a driving-school rehab option.

Suddenly we're at Petersen Rock Garden, Ore., in Redmond. Here, the late Mr. Petersen paid homage to America with his feverish folk constructions of stone and glass, including an Independence Hall and a phosphorescent tribute to democracy. The plaque below his Statue of Liberty (holding a light bulb torch) reads: "Enjoy Yourself - It's Later Than You Think."

The jewel in Oregon's navel is Redmond's Fantastic Museum. Jim Schmit has assembled an eclectic mountain of cool stuff - including Seattle's old Doc Jones material. See Olaf, the nine-foot giant, the altimeter from the Hindenburg, and Hitler's stamp collection! Jim is driven by collecting fever, scooping up everything from historic "four holer" outhouses to Ike's 1953 inauguration parade Caddy.

In Maryhill, Wash., on a plateau high above the Columbia River, stands Stonehenge. This full-sized replica is complete, the way the pagan Druids would have wanted their original to look. Renowned roadbuilder Sam Hill built it to honor Klickitat County's WWI dead. It is a stark concrete vision, made more easily memorable by the gift shop that has been erected nearby. Sunset visitors can still drive doughnuts in front of the monolith - also the way the Druids would have wanted it.

DAY 5

The Portland area offers possibilities, but a string of disappointments nearly wrecks our day. A 35-foot-tall Paul Bunyan Statue eyes non-gentrified Interstate Avenue, including the adjacent Dancin' Bare Lounge. Another one-time outdoor colossus, the He-Man, has been moved inside Giant's Gym due to stringent city signage laws. The top of his 16-foot bronzed body pokes out of sight through a hole in the gym's drop ceiling.

The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry was on our list for three reasons: a giant outdoor heart, an anatomically transparent woman, and a 70-foot-tall talking tree. We discover, sadly, that the heart was broken by vandals, became a safety hazard, and had to be removed. The transparent woman is "out for repairs."

The Talking Tree is actually next door at The World Forestry Center. It's the closest thing to a goddess shrine area pagans have, but it's still pretty dull. Officials say that it's much better than the abstract "70s Tree" it replaced.

Nike Town, in downtown Portland, is not a tribute to Nike missiles, or even the pagan goddess of victory. Ads for this full-price activewear outlet ask the question, "What If The Louvre Had a Sports Wing?" To this we add, "What if the Louvre looked like it belonged in a mall, displayed only one or two things of interest, then sold you sweat socks?" Postcards are $1 each, and picture taking is verboten without the approval of a PR remora.

Next, we hope to fuel up in Milwaukie, Ore., at Art Lacey's famous Bomber Gas, a filling station with a B-17 suspended over the service island. Only now it's a flower shop! Another dubious peace dividend: the old Flight 97 Restaurant in McMinnville is gone, too. Last year the bomber once propped above it flew off under its own power.

In front of the Damascus Fire Department, a 21-foot-tall vine-covered cement pillar is really a replica of Oregon's Centennial Candle. The original, erected in real wax to honor the state's 1959 centennial, was supposed to "burn forever." It was extinguished after only 100 days when the sponsor went broke. This concrete version was cast in 1962.

It is any wonder that the next town over is Boring? Evelyn Hopp, weeding the ditch next to the Boring city limits sign, assures us that the town is anything but. "Boring was the name of the man that founded the town," corrects Evelyn, a local librarian.

Rain sputters as we arrive at the conveniently indoor Hart's Reptile World, in Canby. Mary Esther Hart lives in this long, low building together with her family of snakes, lizards and crocodiles. Visitors trip over Wilbur, a friendly crocodile, who has an unleashed run of the place. He also has his own tuxedo, and is available for parties and company picnics. An abandoned tiger snake too venomous for any zoo is here, along with a 20-pound snapping turtle mysteriously found in local waters, that "could take a child's foot off in one bite." Live mice and rabbits are kept on hand for snake food, and the "Easter Bunny Feed" is an annual event.

DAY 6

Long Beach, Wash., features three attractions: Marsh's Free Museum, the World's Largest Frying Pan and the World's Longest Drivable Beach. Marsh's Free Museum is the home of Jake, The Alligator Man, a mummified half-man/half-crocodile thing - the inevitable result when man and reptile live together - whose visage beckons on billboards and bumper stickers. Also on display here are several two-headed and Siamese animals, and the lifelike freeze-dried body of Morris, Marsh's long-time single-headed feline mascot, who recently passed on. Across the street, the Frying Pan hangs, reminding all of the annual Clam Festival.

When visiting the world's Longest Drivable Beach the tow service and natives offer these tips: 1) Stay on the approach and gun it when you get near the water. 2) You might get stuck because the sand isn't normally this dry. 3) If you get stuck, the tide will come in soon and flood your car unless you get it towed right away. 4) Have $50 in cash handy in case of emergencies.

The Mount St. Helens Visitors Center, in Silver Lake, exhibits a simulated magma chamber and chronicles Ma Nature's famous overpercolation. On film, feisty Harry Truman stays put at the base of the mountain despite warnings. Later, a ranger points to the spot where Harry resides under 300 feet of volcanic ash and mud. The best souvenir from nearby gift shops is the "Before and After" Mount St. Helens salt-and-pepper-shaker set, sculpted from ash and food-safe glaze.

Both Winlock, Wash., and Mentone, Ind., currently claim ownership of the World's Largest Egg. Each has one 11 feet long. Winlock's sits atop a 10-foot pole, with a nice bed of flowers beneath it.

We pause briefly at Littlerock's Mysterious Mima Mounds - a lumpy landscape stretching to the vanishing point. We quickly leave after learning that scientists' best explanation isn't UFOs, Trilateralists or pagans, but prehistoric gophers.

Tacoma's coffee-pot shaped Bob's Java Jive reminds us that we have returned to the land of the midnight jitters. We drive north into the frothing caffeine inferno - straight back to Archie McPhee's, to load up on fresh radiation suits and any rubber souvenirs we couldn't find on the road.

Thank you, Northwest - Land of Varied Wonders!

Doug Kirby, from Middletown, N.J., and Mike Wilkins, from San Francisco, Calif., are two of the authors of The New Roadside America (Fireside/Simon & Schuster, 1992). Their wives stayed home, but get first dibs on souvenirs.