Random Roadside Attractions From My Drive Home
During my drive back to Indiana for Christmas, I used the Roadside America website to map out a couple attractions and oddities that I would pass along the way.
These eyes have already seen the World's Largest Czech Painted Egg, World's Largest Easel, and Wheat Jesus. What will this journey bring?
Here are some highlights from the more than 3,000 mile drive from Billings to Evansville, Indiana, and back.
Had to play "Meet In The Middle" by Diamond Rio while stopping in Belle Fourche, South Dakota. Apparently this is just a monument to the Geographic Center of the Nation, but the actual center is about 20 miles outside of town.
Get the world's best five-cent coffee and free ice water at Wall Drug in Wall, SD. I'm just one of more than two million visitors who roll through every year.
When the United States Air Force operated the Minuteman missile silos east of Wall, the Hustead family offered free coffee and donuts to the service personnel as they traveled to and from Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City. Wall Drug honors the men and women in the armed services by providing them free coffee and donuts to this day.
Had to swing into Mitchell, SD to see the Corn Palace. The building has been around since the late 1800's, and every year is covered in "thousands of bushels of native South Dakota corn, grain and grasses that are arranged into large murals."
This burger restaurant in Evansville, Indiana used to be a bus station. Originally built in the 1920s to be a theater, it sat vacant until opening in 1939 as a Greyhound bus station with an iconic neon sign that still works today.
This is the god of sub-zero temperature statue, welcoming me into Wyoming. He's saying "Hello there...I'm shirtless and wearing a skirt in 12-degree weather."