Roadside America (pictures pending!)

My Grandparents live in West Palm Beach, FL. It’s sunny and filled with strip malls in the way only Florida is, and it’s a long way from home. So when someone ends up in the hospital, it isn’t necessarily easy to figure out what to do next. Which is why, with my grandfather’s 88th birthday approaching and his frequent trips to the hospital, my mom and I hit the road: Great American Road Trip style.

If you’ve never driven from New York to Florida, you’ve really missed out on some fantastic lapses in the time/space continuum. Because of the sheer volume of tiny states in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, the first several hours breeze by. We’re in New York! No, Pennsylvania! West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina! In the Carolinas and Georgia the states get bigger and things slow down a bit until you arrive in Florida. “We’re here!!” you think, and if you’re going to Jacksonville, you really are. West Palm Beach, on the other hand, is at the bottom of Florida and reaching it is a lot like driving to the Northern most point of Canada, or to a White Castle in New Jersey: sure, you could do it – but why would you want to?

When we arrived in West Palm, everything was fairly quiet. Happily, Grandpa got out of the hospital in time to celebrate his birthday at home with us, and even though Tropical Storm Faye brought the rain and blew into the hotel to knock over our continental breakfast, things were relatively quiet.

But life is about the journey, not the destination. So here are a few things we found along the journey.

NATURAL BRIDGE

Natural Bridge, Virginia is home to one of the Nine Wonders of the World. It is a gigantic rock formation over a small river that forms a land bridge. This bridge is big. It’s large enough to support a low traffic highway, which thanks to our burning desire to experience nature without ever having to leave our cars, it does. Thomas Jefferson is the first recorded owner of Natural Bridge. A teenage George Washington is rumored to have vandalized it by craving his initials into the stone back in his wild and crazy days. Now flocks of tourists arrive every day to ride the complementary bus service, visit the wax museum and the haunted house, ogle the roadside attractions, stay at the nearby luxury hotel, watch the nightly light show and, if there’s time, see the bridge.

FOAMHENGE

While most of Natural Bridge seems to be based on the classic roadside attraction economy, one back road monument over shadows them all.

As we drove down the road, we saw a sign of stone with the chiseled words “Foamhenge” peeking out of the brush and there on the hillside, silhouetted in the afternoon sun, was Stonehenge. Sort of.

Turns out Foamhenge is the only Stonehenge replica in North America made entirely out of Styrofoam. It was created by a local artist for the purposes of “education and entertainment” and hey: one out of two ain’t bad. But Foamhenge is no laughing matter: vandals are threatened with legal fines and counter-vandalism should they take to craving the great Styrofoam cups, under the warning that the artist “hides in the woods” and is “crazy enough to do it!!”

After reading a list of threats written by a crazy man from the woods, I walked about 3 feet and promptly got the roadside-loving crap scared out of me: there was a large man dressed in all black, arms outstretched to strangle me. It was the artist come to kill me! I lamented the fact that Foamhenge would be the last thing I saw.

He held still, careful not to agitate me into a fury of Styrofoam slashing panic. In fact, he didn’t move at all. Turns out that he was a life-sized replica of Merlin, fabled builder of Stonehenge

SOUTH OF THE BORDER

South of the Border, South Carolina (hereby referred to as “S.O.B.”) is probably the most well known roadside attraction in the country, largely because they want you to know about it. S.O.B. billboards begin about 200 miles from the actual site in either direction, translating to 400 miles worth of advertising. When you round the turn on the highway and see that fateful sombero-shaped water tower, it’s nearly impossible for the average road warrior not to stop. We were no exception.

Pulling off the highway into S.O.B is a lot like stepping through a time machine into a 1970’s town populated entirely by a stereotypical and racist “Mexican”-looking cartoon character named Pedro. From it’s humble beginnings as a crap store, S.O.B. has grown into an entire crap town, including highlights like “Pedro’s Gasolina”, “Pedro’s Bowl-a-rama”, “Pedro’s Amusement Park”, and “El Drug” (the drug store). There’s also a couple motels and a camp ground, tucked disturbingly close to a gigantic fireworks store. The streets were lined with gigantic plaster sculpture of animals on parade in no particular order, and a giant mushroom presides over the campground. Everything is brightly colored. Everything is covered with this racist cartoon. Everything is child-like. Everything is about consuming. It was not like the two worlds of New Orleans, but more like watching a production of Jekyll & Hyde where Dr. Jekyll only makes a cameo appearance.

So hats off to Natural Bridge for being beautiful, and to Foamhenge for being exactly the sort of roadside attraction one dreams of finding. And if you ever find yourself lost in a South of the Border, remember: I-95 is just past the fireworks store and straight on til morning.