1. Salton Sea, California
It’s an unexpected sight: California’s largest lake in the middle of its biggest desert. After the Colorado River flooded in 1905, it took 1500 workers and half a million tons of rock to put the river back on course. With no natural outlet, the artificial Salton Sea is here to stay. Its surface is 220ft below sea level and its waters 30% saltier than the Pacific.
Another unusual sight near the lake’s eastern shore is Salvation Mountain, a 100ft-high hill of concrete and hand-mixed adobe, covered with acrylic paint. With the motto ‘God Never Fails,’ it’s the vision of folk artist Leonard Knight.
2. Cadillac Ranch, Texas
In 1974 the late, local eccentric millionaire Stanley Marsh planted 10 Cadillacs (vintage 1949 to 1963) headlights down in a deserted stretch of dirt outside Amarillo – and then moved them further out in 1997 because of town encroachment. The reason? He said he constructed what has come to be known as Cadillac Ranch (I-40 between exits 60 & 62) in a salute to Route 66, using cars he considered to represent the golden age of car travel. The accepted practice today is to leave your own mark on the art by drawing on the cars. Bring spray paint in case other visitors haven’t left any around. Occasionally the cars get a makeover, like when they were all painted pink in honor of breast-cancer awareness. As cool as it sounds, there’s a sort of forlorn feel to the place.
3. World’s Largest Ball of Twine, Minnesota
There’s much ado about which ball of twine actually holds the record these days. But why not pay your respects to the original that started all the fuss? Behold the World’s Largest Ball of Twine in Darwin, 62 miles west of Minneapolis on US 12. To be specific, it’s the ‘Largest Built by One Person’ – Francis A Johnson wrapped the 17,400lb whopper on his farm over the course of 29 years. Gawk at it in the town gazebo.
Better yet, visit the museum beside it and buy your own twine ball starter kit in the gift shop.
4. Meteor Crater, Arizona
The second most impressive hole in Arizona was formed by a fiery meteor that screamed into the atmosphere about 50,000 years ago, when giant sloths lived in these parts. Meteor Crater, 40 miles east of Flagstaff, is an out-of-this-world site for those with a thimbleful of imagination. Nearly a mile across and 600ft deep, there are lookout points around the crater’s edge but no hiking to the bottom.
5. Coral Castle, Florida
This favored stop in Homestead is one man’s kitschy do-it-yourself testament to lost love: Latvian immigrant Ed Leedskalnin dug up over 2.2 million tons of coral rock to build this mock castle.
Its engineering was once a bit of mystery, especially since the broken-hearted Romeo worked secretively at night without using any mortar. Some claim that the marvel has unusual electromagnetic properties.
6. Lucy the Margate Elephant, New Jersey
Drive around the beach communities just south of Atlantic City and something massive, gray and kitsch will stop you in your tracks: Lucy the Margate Elephant,a 65ft-high wooden pachyderm constructed in 1881 as a developer’s truly weird scheme to attract land buyers to the area. It was variously used as a hotel, beach cottage, private mansion and last, a tavern, but rowdy patrons almost destroyed her. Now recognized on the National Register of Historic Places, Lucy is open for tours during summer, starting every half hour, weather permitting.
7. Wall Drug, South Dakota
A tourist trap par excellence, this drugstore in South Dakota is famous for its roadside billboards that start advertising ‘free ice water’ several states away but it’s a surprisingly worthy stop. They really do have 5¢ coffee, free ice water and enough diversions and come-ons to warm the heart of schlock-lovers everywhere.
Don’t miss the animatronic dinosaurs.
8. Marfa, Texas
Whether you're visiting to see the Marfa Mystery Lights - unexplained lights that dance on the nighttime horizon, or the art installation piece, "Prada Marfa"- a full-size, non-functioning Prada store that sits in the middle of the West Texas, or just to meet the colorful locals, the small town of Marfa, Texas has no shortage of weird and wonderful delights to gawk at and partake in.
9. Mammoth Cave, Kentucky
Mammoth Cave is the longest cave system known in the world, with over 390 miles of passageways. It became a World Heritage Site on October 27, 1981, and an international Biosphere Reserve on September 26.
10. Dr. Evermor's Forevertron, Baraboo, WI
Built in the 1980s, is the largest scrap metal sculpture in the world, standing 50 ft. (15,2 m.) high and 120 ft. (36,5 m.) wide, and weighing 300 tons. It is housed in Dr. Evermore's Art Park on Highway 12, in the town of Sumpter, in Sauk County, Wisconsin, United States.
The sculpture incorporates two Thomas Edison dynamos from the 1880s, lightning rods, high-voltage components from 1920s power plants, scrap from the nearby Badger Army Ammunition Plant, and the decontamination chamber from the Apollo 11 spacecraft. Its fictional creator, Dr. Evermor, was born Tom Every in Brooklyn, Wisconsin and is a former demolition expert who spent decades collecting antique machinery for the sculpture and the surrounding fiction that justifies it. According to Every, Dr. Evermor is a Victorian inventor who designed the Forevertron to launch himself, "into the heavens on a magnetic lightning force beam." The Forevertron, despite its size and weight, was designed to be relocatable to a different site—the sculpture is built in sections that are connected by bolts and pins.
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That actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it.
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Never been to any of them. But I hope I might.
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