Strangest Roadside Attraction In Each State HA-NJ 2of3

    This week is part 2 of my 3-part blog highlighting an interesting, unusual, or historic roadside attraction for each of our 50 states. This week covering Hawaii through New Jersey.

11) Hawaii

Strangest attraction: Pineapple Garden Maze

Year built: 1999

Located on the Dole Plantation, the world’s largest maze features 14,000 colorful Hawaiian plants, has nearly 2.5 miles of paths, and covers more than three acres. In the maze, the goal is to locate the eight secret stations. The fastest finishers win a prize and get their names recorded on a sign at the maze’s entrance.

12) Idaho

Strangest attraction: Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 1 Atomic Museum

Year built: 1951

Ever wanted to touch the instruments in a nuclear reactor control room or try to use the mechanical arms used to hold radioactive materials? You can at the Experimental Breeder Reactor No. 1, or EBR-1 for short, which made history on Dec. 20, 1951, when it became the first plant to generate usable electricity from atomic energy.[Note:  Experimental Breeder Reactor #1 is shown as ‘temporarily closed’ with no explanation. However, the Experimental Breeder Reactor #1 Museum is shown as ‘call for hours of operation.]

13) Illinois

Strangest attraction: The Super Museum

Year built: 1993

It’s a bird! it’s a plane! No, it’s a Superman museum. Located on Superman Square in the Man of Steel’s official hometown of Metropolis, the two-story building features more than 20,000 items from longtime Superman enthusiast Jim Hambrick’s collection, including the only remaining George Reeves costume from the original TV series.

14) Indiana

Strangest attraction: United States Vice Presidential Museum

Year built: 1993

Officially known as The Quayle Vice Presidential Learning Center after the 44th vice president, the two-story former church building showcases the history of all the vice presidents, including memorabilia and a theater. Did you know Mike Pence is the sixth VP from Indiana, following Schuyler Colfax, Thomas Hendricks, Charles Fairbanks, Thomas Marshall, and Dan Quayle?

15) Iowa

Strangest attraction: Future Birthplace of James T. Kirk

Year built: 1985

The town of Riverside, incorporated in 1882, is best known for an event that won’t occur for over two centuries. That’s when James T. Kirk, future captain of the USS Enterprise, will be born. A plaque commemorates the upcoming event, and an annual Star Trek festival is held in the town that claims Kirk as its own after creator Gene Roddenberry wrote that the captain was born in Iowa. [Note: Listed as ‘temporarily closed’ with no explanation.]

 16. Kansas

Strangest attraction: World’s Largest Easel with Giant Van Gogh Painting

Year built: 2001

Kansas is the Sunflower State, so it makes sense that Canadian artist Cameron Cross pitched Goodland for his third and so far last giant recreation of a famous Van Gogh work. The 32-by-24 foot “Sunflower” recreation rests on an 80-foot tall easel a half-mile off I-70. If you’re curious, the other two are in Altona, Manitoba in Canada and Emerald, Australia.

17. Kentucky

Strangest attraction: The Vent Haven Museum

Year built: 1973

Hey, dummy, did you know this is the only museum in the world dedicated to ventriloquism? Housing more than 900 dummies used by ventriloquists from the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, the dolls are from founder W.S. Berger’s collection. Berger was not a professional ventriloquist. He retired as president of the Cambridge Tile Company.

18. Louisiana

Strangest attraction: National Hansen’s Disease Museum

Year built: 1999

Located at the former National Leprosarium, it’s a museum that honors the once quarantined on site leprosy patients and the medical staff who took care of them. The hospital began as the Louisiana Leper Home in 1894 before becoming one of two leprosy hospitals in the U.S.

19. Maine

Strangest attraction: Lenny the Chocolate Moose

Year built: 1997

Located in Len Libby Candies, a store that sells handcrafted chocolate and ice cream, Lenny is a 1,700-pound solid milk chocolate moose. He resides in a pond of white chocolate tinted with food coloring. The self-proclaimed “World’s Largest Chocolate Animal Sculpture” is eight feet tall and over nine feet from end to end.

20. Maryland

Strangest attraction: National Museum of Civil War Medicine

Year built: 1993

The National Museum of Civil War Medicine is dedicated to demonstrating how techniques developed on the battlefields of the Civil War contributed to modern medicine. If you like gore, this could be your place. More arms and legs were cut off during the Civil War than in any other war in U.S. history, according to the “Ammunition and Amputations” display.

21. Massachusetts

Strangest attraction: The Museum of Bad Art

Year built: 1994

One man’s trash becomes an art fancier’s dream. Antique dealer Scott Wilson started the collection after showing a painting he had recovered from the trash to some friends, who then suggested the idea. The pieces in the Museum of Bad Art range, according to the museum’s website, “the work of talented artists that have gone awry to works of exuberant, although crude, execution by artists barely in control of the brush.”

22. Michigan

Strangest attraction: Hoegh Pet Casket Co.

Year built: 1966

The tour at Pet Casket Factory starts in a showroom, where a complete pet funeral seems to be in progress — with casket, floral arrangements, candles, and velvet paintings of mournful, large-eyed puppies. It concludes at the model pet cemetery outside. And there’s a brass plaque on the crematorium: “If Christ would have had a little dog, it would have followed Him to the Cross.”

23. Minnesota

Strangest attraction: Jolly Green Giant

Year built: 1979

The 55.5-foot Jolly Green Giant statue grew out of a local radio station owner’s “Welcome Travelers” program. As he interviewed people who passed through town, he gave them Green Giant vegetables (canned in a local factory) at the end of each show. The guests would sometimes ask, “Where’s the Green Giant?” An idea and a monument were born.

24. Mississippi

Strangest attraction: Devil’s Crossroads

Year built: 1938

Location: Corners of Highways 61 and 49, Clarksdale

Closest city: Oxford

If you’re a blues fan, you might be familiar with the legend of blues icon Robert Johnson selling his soul to Satan at this crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Legend aside, this busy intersection is hard to miss thanks to a signpost with giant guitars sitting atop. Nearby, learn more about Johnson at the Rock ‘n Roll and Blues Heritage Museum.

25. Missouri

Strangest attraction: Jesse James Home Museum

Year built: 1881

In the Jesse James Home Museum you can see the infamous bullet hole in the interior wall made after Robert Ford pulled out his .44 caliber Smith & Wesson pistol and shot the legendary outlaw behind his right ear on April 3, 1882. After James’s body was exhumed in 1995, it was determined that the bullet that killed him never left his body.

26. Montana

Strangest attraction: Talking Penguin Statue

Year built: 1989

Cut Bank, a town of 3,000, considers itself to be the coldest spot in the nation. To back up its claim it has a 27-foot tall talking penguin made from 10,000 pounds of concrete over a metal frame, which talks (when its speaker works), bleating out the slogan, “Welcome to Cut Bank, the Coldest Spot in the Nation!”

27. Nebraska

Strangest attraction: Kool-Aid: Discover the Dream exhibit at the Hastings Museum

Year built: 1927

Kool-Aid, the flavored powdered drink mix, is the creation of Edward Perkins, who came up with the concoction in his mother’s kitchen. The Hastings Museum’s Kool-Aid: Discover the Dream exhibit explores the life of Perkins, whose other creations included Nix-O-Tine Tobacco Remedy and M, a gasoline additive.

28. Nevada

Strangest attraction: Toilet Paper Hero of Hoover Dam

Year built: 2007

Can you imagine cleaning latrines for 7,000 men in 120 degree heat? That was the inspiration for Steven Liguori for his statue to “Alabam,” who worked at the nearby Hoover Dam construction site. Alabam cleaned the outhouses, a thankless job that Ligouri honored with this statue.

29. New Hampshire

Strangest attraction: The Redstone Rocket

Year built: 1971

Warren, a small town of less than 1,000 people in the middle of the state, stands out for its 66-foot Redstone rocket shell. This type of rocket was used to launch the first American satellites and astronauts. The Rocket stands upright on top of a cement block in the center of town between the Methodist church and the municipal building.

30. New Jersey

Strangest attraction: World’s Largest Light Bulb

Year built: 1938

It shouldn’t be a surprise that atop the Edison Memorial Tower at the Thomas Edison Center at Menlo Park, named for the man who developed the practical electric light bulb, there’s the world’s largest light bulb. It’s 14 feet tall, weighs eight tons, and crowns the 12-story tower.