WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION (2010 EDITION) PART 2

Continued from Part I

RAPID CITY, SOUTH DAKOTA (CONTINUED)

The next morning we healed our broken expectations with another surprisingly free attraction in Rapid City– Dinosaur Park!

I think a good road trip can be measured in fake dinosaurs. If you haven't been counting, this was our fifth encounter with prehistoric sculptures. The park offers a wonderful 360 degree view of the city. You can see about five of those degrees in the photo above.

Someone left a water bottle on the podium between these two. I started to move it for the photo and caught myself– it's like they're fighting over bottled water—hilarity! Except that you can't really see the bottled water.

I said before that I like my roadside attractions unchanged, well I found this old slide from the '60s (at this great site) and the only differences are taller trees and a paved street. All five creatures are still present and bearing original colors. No need for time travel this time.

Knowing that I would be sleeping on the ground for the next three nights, I wasn't eager to leave our refuge at the Foothills Inn. They have a modern sign but thankfully they've left the older, cooler version standing (seen above). They're either thoughtful preservationists or extremely lazy. The hotel had clean rooms, a pool, cable TV, air conditioning, and affordable rates. And I'm not just saying that because the South Dakota Office of Tourism commented on part 1 of this post.

Before we left town I snapped what turned out to be my favorite photo of the trip (Oh, um, I mean aside from the ones of my family). The Stardust Motel sign perfectly embodies 1980s, post-Star Wars sci-fi graphics, and I love how the color of the car compliments it. Unfortunately, this complex has become make-shift housing and the scenes on the porches are far from futuristic, unless we're talking dystopian.


STURGIS, SOUTH DAKOTA

You've seen this street plenty of times except that it's usually pictured with thousands of motorcycles crammed everywhere. The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally concluded mere days before we comfortably drove through town. I was frustrated by the timing because this year Pee-Wee Herman, one of my cultural heroes, attended the event where he performed the world's largest Tequila dance. The place is pretty wimpy looking without all those hogs huh, I was the toughest looking guy around and I was driving a minivan.

We crossed into Wyoming and the sky was what I call "vintage postcard blue."

Before long our next directive was in sight— Devils Tower National Monument! Like most folks my age, my first lesson on the Devils Tower was taught by Mr. Steven Spielberg. When we first witnessed the amazing formation in the distance, all the creepiness of Close Encounters came flooding back. Throughout our visit I felt a wonderful surge of mystique every time I laid eyes on it.

Road signs instructed us to tune into some AM station for more information and I'm so glad that I did. A faint, static-ridden message that could have been recorded decades ago filled our car. The disembodied voices of park rangers repeatedly gave me chills.

The mood switched from Sci-fi to Nature Film when we discovered that the surrounding fields are home to literally thousands of prairie dogs...


We arrived at the visitors center to find a group of excited onlookers pointing out several climbers scaling the sides of the monolith. Turns out anyone can do this if they have the wherewithal and register ahead of time. You probably can't see the two dark specs on the lower left side of this photo, but those are people.

We walked the entire diameter of the landmark. It took a very long time, though that could be due to the four-year-old clinging to my neck in a half nelson hold.

I heard a snippet of a talk being given by a park ranger who seemed to take his job very seriously. It went something like this...

"What does Devils Tower mean to you?
Is it just something you saw in a UFO movie?
Or is it just another pit stop on your family vacation?
Well I'll tell you what it means to ME..."

Well, truth is.. YES, to me it's exactly both of those things, but his tone suggested that I should somehow feel guilty for this. How dare my interest derive from a classic film I saw when I was four. Yeah, in fact, I only care about the White House because I saw it get blown up in a Will Smith movie. And what, should I have made this our destination—maybe spent a couple weeks encircling it? Take it easy pal, and let me enjoy this freaky piece of Earth for however long and for whatever reason I choose!

Ahem. Speaking of which I was sorely disappointed with the lack of alien references in the nearby gift shops. I can understand the park downplaying it but it's hard to believe the association with Close Encounters has dried up. The only evidence I saw was a generic alien coloring book and a billboard miles down the road that invited us to have our own "close encounter" with the monument.

I came away with a cool postcard of an old travel poster as well as a cheesy hat pin and a postcard book, both of which may date back to the 1980s. Since our pit stop was over we moved on to...

CODY, WYOMING


I really enjoyed this place. It's the rodeo capital of the world so they have a rodeo every single night throughout the summer.

We set up camp in Bighorn National Forest. The scenery around there surpassed anything I had yet to see. But my photos were such letdowns that I can't bear to post them here.

Speaking of bears, here's a sign near our campsite that kept my wife awake for most of the night...



YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, WYOMING


As a rule, whenever people start talking about Yellowstone I tune them out. It's because they always say the same thing— how beautiful everything is. It gets old quick, and the conversation hits a dead end.

Well, everything in Yellowstone is BEAUTIFUL! My eyes simply weren't prepared. To me it was the most gorgeous I've ever seen nature. People like to say that photos don't do it justice (and then they proceed to show your their photos.) Well, photos don't do it justice...

I learned that old looking signage looks even better against phenomenal backdrops.

Yes, it's beautiful, but as long as I'm unpacking my adjectives, the two runners up are "stinky" and "dangerous." For example, I could only be near the sulfuric stench of the mud volcano for a short time, which isn't a bad thing because it could scald me to death or poison me.


Here's the malodorous Dragon's Mouth. It's so hot that boiling waves are constantly blasting from the opening and the noises it produces are certainly demonic...

They said that new killer sinkholes pop up daily and there's no way to predict where. While you're trying to avoid those, and getting lost, and the bear attacks, you also need to beware the Bison...

I photographed this guy from my car, but there were plenty of folks treating the place like a petting zoo just begging for a goring. I guess it did make things more interesting, like watching auto racing and secretly hoping for a wreck.


And you just have to hope you haven't planned your vacation when the supervolcano you're sleeping on inevitably erupts. (Although, it may get us no matter where we are.) The Haunted Mansion has nothing on this place.

I enjoyed the alien-looking landscapes created by the boiling water...


Those were all part of the Mammoth Hot Springs.

Of course we had to check out Old Faithful...

I'm sure I would have forgotten the entire experience by now, were I not reminded daily by my souvenir coin and stretched penny.


Having survived three days it was time to head homeward. I made sure to take a different route to get a fresh set of scenery. Wyoming was crazy-gorgeous and it felt like driving through a Western. In this pic a river, a road and a train track all follow the same path...


What are the odds of a river forming right between a highway and a railroad? [cue rimshot]

On the last night we traded our tent for an Embassy Suite in Denver. Our lack of a real map caused one final vacation mishap when our printed directions to the hotel led us to a maximum security prison; apparently they have similar addresses.

With one last day of driving ahead I had to make a decision— do I travel the fastest route or go hours out of the way to see Dodge City, Kansas for the first time? I've wanted to visit ever since I first saw National Lampoon's Vacation, but I've never traveled anywhere near the place. I tapped into my inner Griswold and decided to go for it.

In the film, Dodge City looks like a county fair on the set of a Wild West flick...


I was hoping to relive the scene in the saloon where Clark says "Hey, Underpants!" to the bartender who responds with a dummy shotgun blast. Billboards for the Boot Hill museum made me wonder if that's where it happened.

DODGE CITY, KANSAS

Let me just save everyone some trouble here. Upon listening to the DVD commentary (after my return) I discovered the Dodge City in Vacation is a back lot at Warner Brothers Studios and the interior is the Strater Hotel of Durango Colorado. It's one of the few times that they didn't shoot at the authentic location. (Cousin Eddie's house isn't really in Coolidge, Kansas either)

Rewind to a time prior to this discovery, I'm standing at the desk of the Boot Hill museum confusing two sixteen-year-old cashiers, one of which thinks she may have heard of a movie called Vacation, but isn't positive. Despite my misunderstanding I took heart in the fact that the experience captured the very spirit of the film. Thank goodness they had a penny squishing machine and cheap tin badges or I might have grown irate and threatened them with a BB gun.

For the record they do have a fake Western town (albeit far less festive looking), however you have to pay ten bucks to see it. Or just stick your camera through a hole in the surrounding fence...


After a brief stop in Greesburg Kansas (which is notable for being mostly demolished by a tornado) we saw our last bit of roadside art...


And suddenly the trip was but a memory, carefully preserved with brain matter, photos, and most importantly, a shelf-full of dazzling clutter.

THE JOHNSON SMITH HORROR RECORD COMES TO LIFE!

For years Jason Willis freed vintage Halloween records from their rare vinyl cages and unleashed them into the digital realm (via his Scar Stuff blog) where they have spread like a zombie virus. Amid all the sharing Jason was able to reclaim and make available a recording that held tremendous sentimental value to him (and many others), the 1973 Johnson Smith Horror Record.


It was coveted regularly because it appeared as a perennial listing in Johnson Smith's ubiquitous comic book ads. However, only the really lucky kids got it because unlike most of the products sold by the company, this item was exclusively available through them.

(MP3s of the entire record are available here.)


The second side of the brief record features a "semi-cohesive story line," the details of which could only be deciphered by the minds of young listeners—until now. For Jason's first-ever animated project he chose to illustrate the crude story with gruesome graphics from old magazines produced by Eerie Publications. The marriage of the audio and visuals is spot on. These elements are born of the same era and they share the same over-the-top, b-grade vernacular.

So unless ye be squeamish, I invite you to click on over and experience this brutal scarefest in all its bloody glory. Note that it's certainly not for the kiddies, and your boss may not appreciate it either.

You can read more about the technical specifics at Jason's blog

INSTANT VENTRILOQUISM- NOW WITH SCRIPT

There's an old post of mine that's maintained a steady trickle of traffic since I wrote it back in July of 2006. It's the one where I shared Jimmy Nelson's Instant Ventriloquism, a mail order record from 1964.

My original upload lacked the script that came with the record. The missing document covered a conversation between you, the aspiring ventriloquist, and Farfel the dog. Thanks to the generosity of Dan Rodden this exchange is no longer a mystery. Additionally, he passed along some tracks with improved audio quality.

So you can visit the updated post or
download the album with the script here or
get the script by itself here

and you'll be on your way to a satisfying dialog with a prerecorded dog puppet!

ROADSIDE ARCHITECTURE AND MID-CENTURY DESIGN IN GRAND THEFT AUTO: SAN ANDREAS

Some very ugly stuff goes down in the Grand Theft Auto series of video games. That's why I was surprised to find so much of my favorite kind of beauty scattered throughout this land of chaos. The virtual landscape is peppered with odd tourist attractions and vintage Americana, most of which was carefully modeled after the real world.

I was inspired to capture this phenomenon in a photo essay wherein every picture was actually taken by my in-game character. Visit my article on Monkey Goggles to take a guided road trip through San Andreas where there's lots more to do than just steal cars.

WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION (2010 EDITION) PART I

In the summer of the year two thousand and ten (A.D.) my family and I set out to explore some of our few remaining unvisited states. Yellowstone National Park was the destination, but only after we'd seen the living heck out of South Dakota and Wyoming.

As if a three thousand mile camping trip with a preschooler wasn't challenging enough, a few additional obstacles presented themselves early in the journey...

1. I remembered that our atlas was still in the garage, carefully laid among a selection of supplies including jumper cables, first aid kit, and auto fluids.

2. Our phone stopped working.

3. We discovered that our van needed four new tires which cost us a three hour wait and roughly half of our vacation budget.

On the first day I took one photograph. It was of my wife tying my son's shoe near a dumpster behind a Wendy's. This occurred as we walked to lunch through the August Sun while our van was being serviced. I deleted that photo. Thankfully that was the extent of our misadventures, and throughout the following week I took over a hundred new pictures, happy ones, some of which I would like to show you now.

MITCHELL, SOUTH DAKOTA

The Corn Palace has been on my list of must-see tourist traps for many years. It was day two and we'd already traveled nearly eight hundred miles without a single frivolous stop. I was in dire need of a hefty dose of "offbeat." The sight of this sign for the Corn Palace Motel was soothing to my eyes, and the giant steer was just frosting...

It seems that this business has no affiliation with the actual Corn Palace. Ah, the blatant cash-in— a vital part of the tourism food chain.

At long last my eyes met the building made entirely of corn. Well, that's how I understood it before my visit. It's really a brick structure covered in a layer of corn. The walls boast huge corn murals, both inside and out. I was impressed to learn that new corn is reapplied annually, and the design follows a new theme each year. I was surprised to learn that the attraction does not endure daily bird attacks.

While I've seen numerous photos of the Corn Palace's exterior I had no idea what was inside. I was looking forward to uncovering this mystery first hand. Spoiler Alert: I'm going to show you what's inside. It is.... IT IS...

...a basketball court. To be exact: a gift shop on a basketball court. But when it gets too cold for tourists the locals play ball and there's even a stage for performing arts. Sheesh, why haven't I been jazzing up these captions with corn-related puns? Well it's too late now.

After investing in a squished penny and a commemorative spoon we headed across the street to find more gift shops and a fiberglass corncob with a face. Music played from speakers on the roof and I got especially excited when "The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers came on. It just seemed like the most perfect song in the world to listen to while taking pictures of millions of corn kernels.

Nearby are the ruins of the Enchanted World doll museum. Please, let's not dwell on it.

Everyone knows you can measure the worth of a community by the number of giant animal statues they have, and Mitchell has many...

The Thunderbird Lodge offers a well-kept saddled jackrabbit.

It's always nice to find a Sinclair station with enough class to display a statue of their cool mascot. Makes the Shell station across the way seem about as appealing as a funeral home.

Downtown Mitchell seems to be thriving and they have some great looking old store fronts...


But admittedly, the entire time I was there I was a bit antsy to get to our next stop...

WALL, SOUTH DAKOTA

I've seen "Where The Heck Is Wall Drug?" bumper stickers decorating RVs since I was a kid, but I had to wait until the late '90s to learn exactly what the heck it is. My copy of The New Roadside America by Doug Kirby explained that it's "a sprawling tourist mall that employs a third of the town's population." and he deemed it one of the "Seven Wonders of Roadside America." A decade after reading that, I finally made it.

This 80 foot dinosaur is the final effort to lure travelers off the interstate. His job is easy because by this point drivers have been primed for a visit by literally hundreds of signs spanning a cluster of states.

The dinosaur was built by Emmet Sullivan, who was also behind the Christ of the Ozarks in Eureka Springs, AR, Dinosaur Park of Rapid City, SD and the abandoned Dinosaur World that I'm so fond of. Thanks to this trip I've seen Emmet's entire body of work within the past year.

Practically the entire town of Wall exists to cater to visitors; there are dozens of gas stations, gift shops, and cool motels like this one...


Downtown Wall is reminiscent of many small American towns except that every storefront on one side of the street has morphed into a single complex and often 20,000 people shop there in a day.


Inside is a collision of all the modern facets of the tourism industry: restaurants, ice cream parlors, animatronic displays, coin-ops, photo ops, and specialty shops.

Fake city streets—check

Western-themed dining halls with nicely dated decor—check

Over-sized coin-operated barroom piano gorilla—of course

Rideable Jackalope—got one

Robotic singing cowboys—yes

One of these— check

T-Rex that comes to life every 12 minutes to terrify your son—and check

As legend has it, their entire empire is the product of a single draw— free ice water. It's still free and the "well" is on display...



Wall Drug is sort of like a mom and pop mall. My one complaint is that it's such a well-functioning operation; everything is up-to-date and closely managed. It's the reason they've flourished for so long. But my ideal tourist meccas are stuck in the past and virtually unchanging. Wall Drug certainly has its layers of history, but there's little chance of finding a box of back scratchers that were kicked under a shelf thirty years ago.

This was going through my mind right before our departure. But then I made a discovery in an out-of-the-way window that just about wiped away those thoughts...

This menagerie of deteriorating stuffed animals with bodies of children wearing vintage clothing is everything a vacationer like me hopes for.

You may bask in my haul of surprisingly affordable Wall Drug souvenirs. (Every family gets one free bumper sticker, additional stickers were ten cents apiece.) And I can't think of a better place in the world to buy a flocked Jackalope.

Speaking of buying stuff, one of the mysteries of the trip was this...


Why is the Plus cheaper than Regular? This was the case with numerous stations throughout the region. Is it some trick where people choose Regular out of habit and pay too much? (If so I fell for it at least once.) Is it something to do with ethanol? Why was it limited to the tourist areas?
Speaking of which, our next stop was...

RAPID CITY, SOUTH DAKOTA

I was pretty impressed with this place. The downtown was very much alive and had some really great visuals...

The street corners feature a collection of life-size metal Presidents of the United States. I'm not sure why I didn't get a shot of those, but one thing I couldn't stop photographing was the most amazing storybook land that I've ever been to. It's called Storybook Island and it has more displays and playground equipment jammed into one park than I ever thought possible.

I've been to storybook attractions with shameful admission prices that contain a fraction of the stuff this one has. Admission to Storybook Island?... Free! There is a donation kiosk, but the park is run by volunteers and the Rapid City Rotary Club.

I recognized some of the amazing old playground equipment from here. (I've always known I'd eventually discover real-world applications for studying vintage catalogs.)


I recognized several fixtures from a trip I took ten years ago to Sparta, Wisconsin's FAST Corporation where the masters of fiberglass improve our world with giant animals, pirates and monsters.

All manner of licensed properties rub elbows here, from Hanna Barbera to Disney to Dr. Seuss. It's all accompanied by a soundtrack of Pixar and Dreamworks films.


There's a children's theater that's sponsored by McDonalds, thus it is adorned with three dimensional renderings of obsolete McDonaldland characters! (I recently expressed my fondness for them in this post.)

I was nuts about places like this before I was a parent, but the experience reached a new level of bliss as I watched my four-year-old frolicking in a froth of fun and childhood wonderment.

Topping a romp like this one seemed impossible, the only thing that might come close would be a gravitational anomaly where logic takes a holiday and all laws of nature are meaningless. The Cosmos Mystery Spot is just that, and the otherworldly phenomenon happens to be conveniently located on the drive to Mount Rushmore.

For some reason all mystery spot demonstrations culminate in wooden shacks (seen above) where chairs balance on two legs and water runs uphill. Note that it is surrounded by mysteriously bent trees which prove the spot's authenticity to even the hardest skeptic. Cosmos boasts an impressive double-shack configuration since there's too much mystery to be contained by just one.

The twenty-minute tour was nearly identical to the one I took years ago at the now-defunct Wonder Spot of the Wisconsin Dells. Multiple tours ran simultaneously which enabled me to preview our tour guide's canned jokes minutes before he told them. The Mystery Spot does not obey gravity and neither does my souvenir shot glass! (seen above) Oh, and my smooshed penny defies the laws of physics.

Having been informed by my son that "That was not fun like you said." we decided to up the ante– with some giant, stone presidential faces.

MOUNT RUSHMORE

There it is, my first ever view of George, Tom, Ted and Abe. I can finally verify that it is not a hoax perpetuated by movies (...or is it?). We proved ourselves better than the other filthy tourists by avoiding the urge to photograph the column engraved with the name of our state.

And don't you hate it when this happens– you try to take a photo in one of our national parks only to have it obscured by a famous actress and musician...
That's Drea de Matteo (best known for her work on The Sopranos and Desperate Housewives) with her fiance Shooter Jennnings (singer/songwriter and son of Waylon) and their daughter Alabama Gypsy Rose.

No one else seemed to recognize them, possibly because they blended in among the many biker couples still lingering after the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally which had just ended that weekend. It was remarkably easy for me to take this shot undetected, as I was one of hundreds of folks pointing cameras in their direction; a paparazzi's dream.

Anyway, I know you've seen this thing before, but this is exactly the way it looked on August 15th, 2010.

Much rarer are photos of the amphitheater at the foot of the mountain, so here's a special glimpse of that for you...


We heard murmurs of some light show that would take place after dark, and the parking attendant confirmed this. We were surprised to hear about such a thing but curious enough to decide to return. So with a few hours to kill we explored the nearby towns. It seemed like a perfect time to find the Flintstones Bedrock City of Custer, SD which I'd just learned about thanks to a tip from Todd Franklin, the mayor of Neatocoolville.

Tripadvisor reviews portray the place as an outdated disappointment run by unhappy senior citizens. This only fueled my desire to visit. However, it did not disappoint on it's promise to disappoint– it was closed. I ventured as far onto the property as possible and took a handful of lackluster pics...

What self-proclaimed "theme park" closes at 5 p.m. on a weekend during tourist season? A disappointing one.

We'd heard that the Needles Highway was not to be missed so we drove it back to Rushmore. It really was incredible. The narrow road was often the only man-made thing that was visible. We flipped out when we found Bison blocking the road. Little did we know they would soon become a common annoyance after a couple days in Yellowstone.


If I knew how to use my camera you'd see a perfect view of Mount Rushmore on the horizon. It really helps you imagine what it would be like if the world were attacked by giants.

We had a hard time coming to grips with the notion of a Rushmore light show. I wondered just how low they would stoop. Would there be lasers and a contemporary soundtrack? What if they used laser technology to animate the faces!? What about fake smoke? What if they start to rap?! "My name's G-Wash and I'm here to say..." (FYI, every horrible faux-rap includes the line "my name's... and I'm here to say) What country-demeaning horrors awaited?

My son was growing restless and I actually found myself talking up this unseen spectacle. "There will be loud music and crazy lights!" My own snobbery was melted away by my hope to please my kid. But only those patient enough to sit through a lecture from a park ranger, an educational film, and a salute to our veterans would be rewarded with the show. We watched these patiently as I whispered "it's almost time." in regular intervals.

And finally, they turned on the juice!...

It started as a faint glow. Gradually the illumination intensified until... until.... the night lights were on. Yes, the "light show" could also be called "turning on the lights." I guess all that other stuff was the show.

Continued in Part 2