the good life (in two million words or less)

It's taken me quite some time, but I have finally organized some of the pictures from trips last year. Just as I would have them, they were all to roadside attractions. Yay! Roadside attractions make me squeal like a little kid. Sadly, a large portion of the attractions that we have left are fading fast. That said, I feel compelled to drag the boy all over the place soaking them in. I'd say that we have a pretty good time and he's an intensely good sport. If you'd like, here are some photos:

First up, Cave City, Kentucky! Hurrah!


This is Golgotha Biblical Golf.






It's been in disrepair for several years now and word is that it is about to be torn down to make room for a "haunted mine" theme park. I've loved coaxing loved ones over the hill to tromp through the tall grasses. It's so peaceful up in the trees. Nothing but astroturf and concrete martyrs. This year, it was in worse shape than in years past. Lots of the statues had been stolen or broken and there was lots of trash and junk lying around. It must have really been a beautiful place back in it's time. I would have loved to been able to sink a ball into the final hole - represented by the resurrection of Jesus, of course. Here is a photo that I took years ago of that hole - back in my "black and white is so artsy - everything has to be black and white" days (forgive me, Gods of Kodachrome, for I have sinned).:




Here are the recent photos:




















I am going to miss that place.

Next up, Dinosaur World! I had always wanted to go to one of these parks where you can walk among the big fake dinosaurs and kept harrassing my friends from Michigan to take me to their dinosaur park, only to find that we have one less than two hours away.








I look tiny in this photo. I think that I am going to take a giant dinosaur everywhere that I go just for that reason.










Oh...like you wouldn't have!








(I wonder if he would be this pimp around real dinosaurs...)




Next up, Wigwam Village - also in Cave City, Kentucky. This place is near and dear to my heart, and if you have never been, I implore of you to go. It is ridiculously cool and lovely. The wigwams aren't really made for tall people...or claustrophobic people...or even neat-freaks, but once you go inside, you don't care anymore (trust me - I am a tall neat-freak.) This trip, we got there pretty late in the evening and most of the other visitors were snug inside their wigwams. We wandered around and took photos and freaked out a few of the people who did wander outside - not on purpose, mind you..it's just that we found this rope and sharp metal menacing object and we didn't think that anyone would need anything from the ice house on a late October evening...anyway, here are the photos:
















This next photo makes me laugh because when we were taking it, a group of people a few doors down started snickering and one lady answered the other's question with, " I don't know....1960's, maybe??"




Somebody give that lady a prize! She was dead-on. The 1950's dress that I wanted to wear was now too tight from an extreme Cave City Taco Bell dinner the night before. Yo quero carbs! My first Taco Bell food ever!


And here are a couple of the shots that got the natives all restless (excuse the pun, it was all that I could think of):










(The couple who plays (or sets up horror movie photo stills) together, stays together - isn't that how the saying goes?


My sense of adventure ran short when we came to our next outing - The Alpine Slide. Good gravy, and some "slide" it was. You take a chair-lift up to the top of the mountain and then you lie down on these plastic widow-makers and barrel down the mountain at the speed of sound. The boy wanted to do it and my role in the whole thing was to talk him out of it...


Here you will see as he consults with the young lady at the booth on the prices and what degree of terror you can get for your money:




Hey, let's zoom in closer on that photo taped to the ticket booth, shall we?:



There it was, in full color photos - proof that you could lose some flesh on this thing. Finally, after some hemming and hawing (is that a Southern saying? will readers from other domains know what that saying means?), the boy just decided to take the chairlift up and down the mountain (to my delight). I, on the other hand, decided that I was too nervous to even do the chairlift (hey, I might own stock in Neosporin but that is due to my inherent clumsiness and not due to chosen death defying feats and amusement rides. Color me the delightful yellowish brown color of chicken shit.I don't care. It matches my eyes.)


So, here he is as he comes back down the mountain - looking dizzy and a little disappointed that he decided to take the made-for-grannies-and-sissies-but-still-too-treacherous-for-my
-wet-blanket-of-a-girlfriend chairlift. He reported that those alpine slides looked like they could really mess you up. He also reported that he is going to do it next time. In this picture, doesn't it look like he is thinking, "She has killed my soul...."?






This next shot is of some kids as they took the ride down the mountain. Click on the photo and zoom in to see their looks of nausea and terror. I wonder if it was the chairlift that did it to them - or did someone up top in Alpine Land explain to them that this slow-as-Christmas, rusty chairlift was a metaphor for their upcoming adult life? I guess we will never know. What I do know is that these little kids have what we in the 1980's nostalgia business call "The Eye of the Tiger".






Next up, we went to Mammoth Cave. The boy had never been on a cave tour and was really excited. It did my heart proud...thus, I let him choose the cave tour du jour. He chose the two hour tour and off we went!

Behind this guy:




What a delightful fellow! Okay, I'm lying...he had some anger issues. We hoped that the dark, claustrophobic, cold cave would somehow soothe him. We also hoped that we didn't piss him off as we have a tendency to piss people off with our sometimes overflowing giddiness (and one of the guy's patches said, "It's a beautiful day. Now watch some bastard F**k it up". We walked for hours behind the biker gent and I whispered in near-silence to the boy why people hate Jane Fonda (I left out the part about the workout videos. It may be my lot in life to school him on all of the delicious pop culture that he missed as a lad who lived in a family that only watched British TV shows...but I think that he is still too young and green to know about those workout videos yet.)

On our last night in Cave City, fortune was with us and we happened upon a little festival and talent show. As always, there were funnel cakes (a tiresome staple to our boy vegetarian as I sweep him from festival to festival full of greasy polish sausages and salty pork rinds):



(Yeah, that's masked glee that you see.)


At the talent show, we sat in the 4th row. It seemed like a good idea at the time but as the show wore on, we realized that it was impossible to make wide eyed expressions of "did you see THAT?" at each other when we were that close to the friends and families of the competitors. First there was this little girl who wore more makeup than I have ever owned. Okay, and her legs are hotter than mine:





The crowd swooned and cooed as she strutted around and sang a grown-up Shania Twain song with lyrics that went, "Any man of mine better walk the line. He better show me a teasin', squeezin', feel good kind of time...."

(feeling of uncomfortable anxiety in stomach as verse after verse was laid out)

(keep in mind that the boy wouldn't let us go to the Wee Little Miss Beauty Pageant held beforehand because he didn't want to see any "Jon Benet action")

There was also this little girl who sang a Shirley Temple song called, "I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas". Sweet song but just as much makeup as the little cowgirl - though, thankfully - more clothing.




Here's a close-up shot:




(that's funnel cake that you hear churning in the boy's guts)

(my eyes are open in a non-blinking "I have stumbled upon wonder" stare)

The show was wrapped up by this group of teenagers:




Yes. Teenagers.

There were also a few adult competitors as well but the only one that I can remember was the guy who sang a song that he wrote himself which contained these lyrics motivated by a sexy day at the rock quarry:

"Meet me behind the rock pile baby, where I get a little boulder..."

Ha! A rock pun!


And now for a few Cave City photos that I can't think of a way to segway into:


This one is of the swankiest men's urinal ever (the boy took this one - I promise - after running out of the restroom shrieking, "OH MY GOD! GIVE ME YOUR CAMERA!"):




(all that they had in the ladies room was a registration box to win a free above ground pool)


This next photo is of a statue that I have seen in Cave City for years at this one concrete yard. Oh, how I want her - and I almost had her once but found to my dismay that she was full of chiggers. (like the life lesson earlier on the chairlift, this could be a metaphor for dating)






At the same concrete yard, you will find these:






(insert your own dating metaphor jokes here)


There's still more Cave City on deck. Next stop is the Mammoth Cave Wax Museum. Yes! It's dark and dank and there are more cave crickets than you can shake a shakey stick at, but I love this place. The owner is so nice and their postcards are awesome. We'll start the tour with the nice vignettes as a quick review of the photos shows that this is going to end distastefully:


The Last Supper scene is really pretty. This one is of Jesus getting an earful from one of the disciples.




Jesus: "Back off, man. I'm the one having to pay for YOUR sins..."



And here is Dolly Parton. The recording at her figure was really out of date and lauded her recent #1 hit with "Love Is Like A Butterfly. In the back of my mind, as I imagine the wax figures coming to life (as I always do), I imagine that Dolly could bring the most terror with those long, spiky fingernails of hers.



Here is one of George and Martha Washington. She freaks me the crap out. I never can figure out why she scares me. It's either because she is the most realistic of the figures or because I think that she is one of the former male figures now in petticoat drag.





Here is one of the vignettes where they put a bunch of characters together as if sitting for a formal photograph. Pictured here (because the recording said so) are Coretta Scott King, one of the Kennedys, Billy Graham and a pope whose name, rank and serial number I can't recall:




The next photo is a poor photo, but I am including it as I am from the South:





That is a nicotine bearded Robert E. Lee behind me. Behind him as if he is about to stab Mr. Lee in the back, is Abe Lincoln. For some reason we are all in a horse stable with a large plastic horse. Similarly, this resembles a dream that I sometimes have when I mix NyQuil and Tylenol PM. That said, and since that particular dream usually leaves me a stinky sweat, we will move on...


to the guest book. You will notice that lots of the visitors who come to the wax museum like to leave comments in the guest book. In this photo, you will see that visitors come from all over and leave comments such as, "nice" or "good" or "interesting". You will also notice that a visitor from Virginia wrote, "HOMOEROTIC".







Whaaa?


After revisiting my photos, I think I might see the common thread that holds this visitor's comment together. Let's look, shall we?

First, let's go back to that photo with Billy Graham and the Pope sitting side by side:




What's that there?....let's zoom in a little on the legs:




I kid you not - the Pope is playing footsy with Billy Graham!

(I shudder to think about how many web hits I will get with that one phrase.)


The only other vignette that I could find that might have fueled the commenter's fire is this one of Wild Bill Hickok and Buffalo Bill Cody:





sigh.



sigh.

Now, maybe we ought to move onto something safe like superheroes?

Here we are now in the town of Metropolis, Illinois:




Here is a blurb stolen from my favorite website, RoadsideAmerica.com:

"In 1972, the town had plans to build a thousand-acre, $50 million "Amazing World of Superman" theme park, with a 200-foot-tall statue. Cars would drive between Superman's legs to enter the park. Then the Arabs shut off the oil and the bankers shut down Metropolis's dream.

The town took over a decade to recover. Then, very cautiously, Metropolis scraped together a thousand bucks in 1986 and put up a seven-foot fiberglass Superman in the town square. It quickly became a target for literal-minded vandals who wanted to see if the Man of Steel was stronger than a speeding bullet. He wasn't, and once again Metropolis's efforts to celebrate their hero were thwarted. What could a small town like Metropolis do?

In 1993, they did quite a bit. The perforated Superman vanished and was replaced by a 15-foot-tall, two-ton, projectile-proof bronze Superman, funded (officially) with engraved bricks purchased by citizens for 35 bucks apiece. That's a lot of bricks for a town of 7,200, considering that the new statue cost $120,000."


Sweeeeeeeet! Here's the boy at the statue:





And since you can make a fool out of yourself when you are in a town where you don't know anyone, here's me as Superman (if you squint really hard):


Here's a few other photos:












And here is a giant grocery bagger that we also found in Metropolis. I'm in love!





But, there's no time for love! It's time to move on to Wright City, Missouri - home to the Elvis Is Alive Museum!




We were soooo disappointed when we arrived at the museum as it was closed up tight without a soul around! We could only poke around outside and peek in the windows. We vow to go back and get inside and meet Bill Beeny in person. He's got Elvis Presley's DNA, for pete's sake! Word has it that the museum is also a real estate office (sounds cooler than any real estate office that I have ever worked in!) Here's what we could get photos of:

First off, the sign explains why we may never get inside:




Also, on the window you will find posted "Ten Reasons Why I Believe That Elvis Is Alive!":





Here you can almost get a view of the mock-up of Elvis' funeral complete with fake Elvis inside:


























Now it's time to head back down South a bit to Cullman, Alabama to see the Ave Maria Grotto. Here's the description from the Grotto website:


"The builder of the miniatures at the Ave Maria Grotto was a Benedictine Monk--Brother Joseph Zoettl, O.S.B. Born in Landshut, Bavaria in 1878, he was maimed in an accident that gave him a hunchback, but luckily it did not hurt his ability to bend over and build the miniatures. He came to Saint Bernard Abbey in 1892. After becoming a Brother in the Benedictine Order, he was appointed to the power plant for the Abbey, and while there he developed his hobby of building miniature shrines. The first replicas were erected on the monastery recreation grounds, but because of the large number of visitors, a new site was selected and on May 17, 1934 the Ave Maria Grotto was dedicated. Brother Joseph continued his work for over 40 years, using materials sent from all over the world. He built his last model, the Basilica in Lourdes, at the age of 80, in 1958.

The Ave Maria Grotto, located on the grounds of Alabama's first and only Benedictine Abbey, consists of over 125 miniatures, reproductions of famous churches, shrines and buildings. Encompassing an area of over three acres, this miniature fairyland sees visitors from all over the world.

Brother Joseph who died in 1961 is buried in the Abbey cemetery a short distance from the Grotto gift shop."

Here is Brother Joseph from the postcard photo:






Here are some photos that we took:













It was such a beautiful and amazing place that is hard to convey in photos. It is mind boggling to think that this one man made all of these detailed little buildings and villages out of concrete and found items like broken cold creme jars and marbles. It was so beautiful that both the boy and I restrained ourselves from pretending like we were Godzilla and Mothra amongst the tiny little towns. And if you know us, you know that means that we were awestruck.






On to the next stop, just down the road a bit we landed in Hanceville, Alabama to see The Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament at Our Lady of the Angels Monastery.

(try saying that one 3 times fast)








From the shrine website:

"In Bogotá, a Salesian priest - Father Juan Pablo Rodriguez - brought Mother Angelica and the nuns to the Sanctuary of the Divine Infant Jesus to attend Mass. After Mass, Father Juan Pablo took them into a small Shrine which housed the miraculous statue of the Child Jesus. Mother Angelica stood praying at the side of the statue when suddenly the miraculous image came alive and turned towards her. Then the Child Jesus spoke with the voice of a young boy: "Build Me a Temple and I will help those who help you." Thus began a great adventure that would eventually result in the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament, a Temple dedicated to the Divine Child Jesus, a place of refuge for all."


And, they did it. According to the literature, the sisters raised the money for the entire temple, shrine and grounds on their own. It's a very peaceful and solitary place. To be honest with you, at first, I didn't really know what to do there. It is a place of meditation and a religious pilgrimage site. I'm from a Baptist/Methodist background. Bible belters don't make pilgrimages...

So, I did as the lost and confused souls do - I headed for the gift shop!




I know! It looks like a castle! I was sad to find though that it was closed. So, with no trinkets in tow, we went back to meditation and self reflection. We went into a little dark chapel that contained a diorama of the birth of Jesus:







I love this little guy:



The chapel was really lovely.




We ended our tour with the life-size replica of the crucifixion of Jesus. I have to tell you, I had never seen a replica quite as realistic as this. We stood amazed.
















And that looks like a good place to end the 2006 tour....


If you made it this far (and we are both still alive from the longest journal entry known to blogger), pat yourself on the back and make yourself a sandwich. I am sure that 2007 will hold some more great trip opportunities (hopefully, you will take some trips too and let me know about them). Here's a little peek at our first 2007 roadtrip:












That's right - worlds of fun, creepy as hell taxidermy animals and more vegetarian meals.... it's a good start, I'd say.

*