Americana the beautiful
CHICAGO – Vacations might take a back seat to paying the electric bills for many Americans this summer, but there are a number of affordable destinations in the U.S. – both historic and quirky – that could prompt some to pack up the car and make an adventure of it.
Just ask Chris Epting. He’s made a career out of finding, photographing and writing about places such as the hill where Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, the junction where James Dean smashed his Porsche Spyder and the site of the world’s largest artichoke.
Like every good picture, these icons have a story to tell. Consider these wonders of the American world:
TrekFest
Where no man has gone before. Then there’s Riverside, Iowa, which took rights as the future birthplace of Captain Kirk, the fabled commanding officer of the USS Enterprise in the “Star Trek” series created by Gene Roddenberry. Every year, this town of 925 welcomes twice as many visitors to TrekFest, a celebration of all things Trekkie combined with the charming and curious that bring small-town parades and festivals alive.
On the agenda this year, scheduled for June 26 and June 27, are celebrity appearances by Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols and George Takei, who were cast in the TV series as Chekov, Uhura and Sulu, respectively.
Legend has it that 25 years ago, Riverside resident Steve Miller, knowing as all Trekkies do that Kirk was born in a small town in Iowa, wondered why that town couldn’t be Riverside. Author Roddenberry, aware that someone someday would ask which town Kirk was born in, decided to give the distinction to the first to ask, according to Tim Geerlings, vice president of the Riverside Area Community Club. “We’re the only Star Trek festival that celebrates from the future rather than the past,” Geerlings said.
Paul Bunyan
standing tall
Considering all the tourist attractions bearing his name and likeness, Paul Bunyan apparently built quite a following in his mythological life as an oversized and highly skilled lumberjack. Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox are a popular duo standing on the shoreline of Lake Bemidji in Minnesota and in Klamath, Calif. And Bunyan is standing and even kneeling in a number of other Midwest cities: Akeley and Brainerd, Minn.; St. Ignace and Ossineke, Mich., and Minocqua and Eau Claire, Wis. There’s a Paul Bunyan Memorial Park – with a site claiming to be his grave – in Keliher, Minn., while another location, Rib Mountain, in Wausau, Wis., insists the big man died there.
World’s Largest Twine Ball Rolled by One Man
This is what RoadsideAmerica.com calls the “mother of all moss-gathering pursuits,” and has long been the pride of Darwin, Minn. Francis A. Johnson, a farmer, apparently had plenty of time on his hands and started wrapping the ball in March 1950 for 4 hours a day, every day. It weighs 17,400 pounds, is 12 feet in diameter and is now housed in a gazebo with Plexiglas windows.
The Blue Whale in Catoosa, Okla.
It was originally a wedding gift to Hugh Davis’ wife, Zelta, in the early 1970s. The 80-foot structure with a mouth large enough to walk into stretched over a swimming pond that was a welcome retreat for Route 66 travelers. Today it has garnered Route 66 Roadside Attraction status with a picnic area.
The World’s Largest Buffalo
In Jamestown, N.D., it weighs in at 60 tons and stands 26 feet high and 46 feet long. Built in 1959, at a cost of $8,500, the buffalo rides herd over the National Buffalo Museum.
The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis
There are a number of them in the South, but the one in Memphis was built around the Lorraine Motel and the balcony on which Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down in 1968. While the hotel has been rehabilitated, the room where King stayed has been left untouched.
The family mausoleum
It’s located at the National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pa. It stands next to the area that claims to be the site of the Abraham Lincoln’s famous Gettysburg Address. There’s no plaque to mark the site because it is privately owned, Epting said, but after in-depth research, there’s little question that’s the hill where Lincoln stood on Nov. 19, 1863.