Roadside attractions
Roadside Distractions
Have you seen it? A contest for everyone who loves the odd and offbeat.
At MidwestWeekends, we love anything that makes us veer off the road and say, "Wow, what the heck is that?''
A lot of highly unusual things can be found along the streets and highways of the Upper Midwest. We call these things
Roadside Distractions, and we always take a photo.
Now we're having a contest so you can see some of our favorite things, too.
Giants of Lake Superior
On a trip around the biggest lake, stop to see larger-than-life heroes and mascots.
You can expect to see a lot of big things on the 1,300-mile drive around Lake Superior, the world's largest lake by surface area.
There's a fish, a Fox, a bear, a goose and a moose — not to mention a 32-foot thermometer and a 35-foot aspiring
saint.
These giants all have stories, part of the folklore of this colorful lake, where life isn't for the faint of heart. On a
Circle Tour, be sure to stop and say hello.
Barn storming
Driving tours in four states showcase the simple but cherished buildings.
There’s just something about barns.
They appeal to everyone — city folk, country folk, anyone who's ever played with a barn kitten. They're
graceful structures, built in every size and shape. And they evoke a nostalgia for simpler times, when ordinary people who
worked hard could prosper.
Many people like to drive around the countryside looking for them. But they're disappearing fast.
Fountain City oddities
A Wisconsin village on the Mississippi River is the capital of the offbeat and unexpected.
It's easy to speed right through the river town of Fountain City, on the way to someplace else, but that would be a mistake.
In Fountain City, all is not as it seems. A Hindu temple sits amid hay fields. One of the world's largest collections of toy pedal cars occupies five barns on a bluff. Dreamlike Santas ride fish in a riverfront studio, models for copies sold around the nation.
On this seemingly ordinary stretch of the Mississippi, people have been inspired by . . . something. Perhaps it's the
dramatic bluffs that loom above town.
Paul Bunyan in Minnesota
In this state, the big guy never dies.
The origins of Paul Bunyan are lost in the wood smoke of long-ago logging camps.
The mighty lumberjack most likely was born in the camps of Maine or Nova Scotia. Nevertheless, northern Minnesota towns have taken the legend and run with it.
Akeley calls itself Paul Bunyan’s birthplace, and it’s got a good claim — it was the headquarters
of the Red River Lumber Co., where, in 1914, a publicist named William Laughead is said to have written the first Paul Bunyan
story in a company brochure.
Road trip: Wisconsin's concrete art
Love goofy roadside attractions? Here's where to find them, from Snow White to Sacagawea.
In the early days of highway travel, some very ordinary folks toiled to enliven Wisconsin's roadsides.
Concrete dinosaurs appeared, and a muskie pulled by horses. King Neptune held court next to Snow White and her dwarves.
There was an ocean liner encrusted with glass, a Hindu temple and mythic figures from the American frontier —
Sacagawea, Paul Bunyan, Kit Carson.
Magnificent obsessions
In the Wisconsin countryside, self-taught visionaries left caches of concrete art.
In Wisconsin, nonconformity is cast in concrete.
In the middle of the last century, a motley collection of ordinary folk — a dairy farmer, a car dealer, a tavern owner, a factory worker — took a sharp turn away from the ordinary.
Out of the blue, they began to fashion fairy-tale characters, castles, temples and historical figures out of concrete,
adorning them with bits of glass, crockery, porcelain and seashells and toiling until their yards overflowed with
figures.
10 tourist traps to love
These roadside attractions dole out equal portions of schlock and awe.
Americans have a love-hate relationship with their tourist traps. They’re so uncool . . . but so irresistible.
What makes something a tourist trap? It’s a place that’s so cheesy you have to see if it’s really as cheesy as it looks. A place so iconic you’ve seen a million pictures of it. A place plugged by thousands of highway billboards.
Mostly, it’s a place everyone else has seen — so you have to, too. We can’t help ourselves, especially when it comes to anything that’s odd or oversized.
Father Baraga's cross
Off Minnesota's North Shore, the Snowshoe Priest had a close call.
Only tough guys lasted for long around Lake Superior, and Father Frederic Baraga was one of them. The Slovenian priest arrived in 1831 and spent a long and frenetic life canoeing and snowshoeing between Ojibwe settlements in Sault Ste. Marie in Michigan; Grand Portage on the northeastern tip of Minnesota; and La Pointe on Wisconsin's Madeline Island.
One day in 1846, Father Baraga, learning of a possible epidemic among the Ojibwe in Grand Portage, set out from Madeline
Island in a small boat with an Ojibwe guide. A terrible storm arose, but they were blown over a sandbar and into the quiet
mouth of the Cross River, where the town of Schroeder is today.
In thanksgiving, they erected a small wooden cross at the site, later replaced by a granite one.
© Beth Gauper, 2007 - 2012 all rights reserved
