Do you brake for oddball roadside attractions, like the Cathedral of Junk, life-sized jackelopes and nuclear bomb testing grounds?

We sure do! And our November jaunt to Virginia was filled with them.

For example, we made a detour to the Missouri Veterinary Medical Foundation Museum in Jefferson City. If you love animals and are just a bit curious about veterinary medicine, this is a stop worth making. For the price of a donation of your choice, you can see rare and unusual objects of veterinary medicine like:

Weird obhjects extracted from animals, like the largest hairball ever found in an animal’s stomach

The growth pattern of a calf fetus

and siamese piglets

The vet museum is a rare opportunity to get a firsthand glimpse at how far animal medicine has come. See the wooden table in the picture below? Until recently, veterinarians performed major surgeries on tables just like this, without anesthesia or sterile conditions.

If you’re anywhere in the vicinity, this pet-friendly attraction is worth a stop. I encourage you to go in your toad, however, since the tiny parking lot barely had room for our compact rig.

When you’re looking for oddball roadside attractions, be sure to check out Roadside America. We constantly use it to find unusual tourist attractions to visit during our travels.

What’s your favorite oddball attraction?
And what source do you use to locate your offbeat destinations? 

The road tripping lifestyle usually gives us time to investigate obscure roadside attractions that most people ignore or just blow past on their rush to get to somewhere else, like Austin’s Cathedral of Junk or the Packer Massacre Site in Colorado.

As we booked it back from the Panhandle to Fort Collins several weeks ago, we came into Colorado through the stunningly remote eastern plains region.

While studying our Rand McNally paper atlas,  I noticed a tiny red landmark called the Genoa Wonder Tower, located in the barren plains region of Eastern Colorado.

With a name like that, I couldn’t help but wonder, what was it?

That night we boondocked in Hugo, a weathered old ag town located about 20 miles east of the Wonder Tower.

After stopping into the Plains Bar for some good, stiff, cheap drinks, I asked a mullet-headed local sitting next to us “So What’s up with this Wonder Tower thing?”

“Oh yeah, that. Well, they’ve got a two-headed goat. Kinda sick but lots of people stop to see it.”

Something about stepping this oddball freak show in the least likely place ever, compelled me to insist that we stop the next day.

After all, how many times in your life do you get to see a two-headed goat?

Step Right Up, Sucker!

In 1926, a man known as Colorado’s own P.T. Barnum, CW Gregory, decided to build a pit-stop curiosity so amazing it would entice traveling automobile tourists to stop and shell out money.

There, in the middle of the plains, they would fill up their gas tanks.

And after gassing up, they could witness sideshow freaks and an amazing view while perched atop the tallest vista between Denver and Manhattan.

He built a motel, gas station, an “oddities” museum with fake, cavern-like interiors and a rickety tower that promised a view of the six adjoining states on a clear day.

Colorado’s Wonder Tower was a popular Highway 24 stop until CW’s death in 1942, after which the attraction fell into disrepair.

Construction of adjacent Interstate 70 almost killed it entirely, until  Jerry and Ester Chubbuck breathed new life into it over over 50 years ago. Today it remains a must-see pit stop in the middle of no-man’s land.

If you’re traveling through eastern Colorado to Denver, you’ve got to make time for this vintage relic from days gone by.

Guess The Object, Get Your Buck Back

At the Genoa Wonder Tower, you’ll pay just $1 to step right up and see the freakiest, jam-packed collection of objects on earth.

Whether you see it as a huge pile of crap or a fascinating collection of obscure, outdated collectibles is up to you. Either way, it’s worth the effort to pull off the highway.

Where else can you touch and hold antique animal castration devices, peer into thousands of poisonous “medical” tincture bottles, eyeball an eight foot long pickled pig and get your picture taken with a stuffed, two-headed goat?

And of course, you’ll have a chance to experience the “six state view” if you’re brave (and svelte) enough to climb up the ramshackle tower ladder/staircase.

Meeting eighty-something year-old Jerry is as much fun as the stop itself.

As we drove up to the deserted attraction on a windy, ominous looking day, he seemed genuinely thrilled to see us as he collected our $1 admission fee, then greeted us with his “Guess What?” quiz.

While performing his museum docent duties, he would spontaneously hold out his hand to present an array of palm-sized artifacts to us, like a petrified dinosaur turd and a bull nose-ring.

But before he revealed the mystery objects, he told us that if we guessed what any of these Ripley’s-quality things were, we could get our admission fee back.

Impossible to Ignore

We flunked the quiz, but like most people, we lingered in the Genoa Wonder Tower far longer than we thought we would, almost two hours.

Trying to walk away was like ignoring a train wreck: impossible to ignore.

Although we didn’t see six states from atop the rickety old tower, the pack rat in me found it hard to stop examining the thousands of antiques haphazardly nailed to the walls and ceilings.

Did I mention everything in the place is for sale? Sometimes for ridiculously high prices.

But the sticker shock of seeing an insignificant, $45 glass bottle is just one of many things that makes this place so bizarre.

At every turn, there was Jerry, cracking corny jokes until the next sucker arrived.

The Wonder Tower is like a cross between a real-life Steven King novel and the biggest flea market freak-show on earth.

Walking through the maze of cavern-like rooms was like meandering through an indoor labrynth filled with crap everywhere we looked.

Jerry won’t be around forever, and it’s probably a safe bet that no sane person would be crazy enough to buy this attraction when he kicks it. So hurry up and get there!

The next time you’re speeding across Colorado’s Eastern Plains on I-70, be a good road tripper. Let off the gas pedal and make time to check out the Genoa Wonder Tower.

Even if you just want to see your first two-headed calf, the detour is entirely worth the effort and your hard earned buck.

This is Americana at it’s best. Don’t miss it!

The Wonder Tower is located on I-70 at exit 371 (Hwy. 109), in Genoa, Colorado.

Before any one corrects me, let’s get one thing straight. The correct spelling is Alferd.

At the foot of Slumgullion Pass just south of Lake City, Colorado is a small patch of dirt with a few white crosses. This final resting place for five hearty souls is often missed by tourists burning up brakes coming down one of Colorado’s steepest mountain passes.

First a little history about Colorado’s favorite Cannibal. You can read all about the life of Alferd Packer elsewhere, so I’ll just provide a synopsis…

In January of 1874 he met Chief Ouray of the Uncompahgre band (Ute tribe) who recommended he and his party postpone their gold prospecting expedition from Gunnison to Breckenridge until the following spring.

He should have heeded Ouray’s advice, or better yet, those in his party should have. After encountering dangerous weather as they had been warned, the party became lost and ran out of provisions.

Packer? Party of five…

To make a long story short, Packer survived by helping himself to the others. And unlike the Donners, this was no party. After a number of trials following the gruesome discovery, Packer claimed he returned from scouting one day to find Shannon Bell roasting and feasting on human flesh. Alledging that Bell rushed him with a hatchet, Packer shot and killed him in self defense, insisting the man had gone mad and murdered all the others.

Neither the Judge nor his jury believed him.

“You man eating son of a … There was seven democrats in Hinsdale County and you ate five of them.”

— Saloon keeper Larry Dolan following Alferd Packer’s first trial.

Now, about that spelling.

You will find Alfred Griner Packer’s given name on both the man’s birth certificate and gravestone. But that’s it. Everywhere else he is referred to as Alferd, including the tattoo on his arm where the artist misspelled his name. Legend has it that is when he adopted the name Aferd, so I’m sticking to it. Get it? Sticking? Tattoo…

Where is the latest roadside attraction you visited where you learned a little history lesson? Or, what places have you been that you insist are just spelt wrong?

The only mystery about the Marfa Lights is why nobody tells you the truth about your actual chances of seeing them.

On our way to Big Bend, we just had to investigate all the hype we had heard about the Mystery Lights of Marfa. We stopped by the Marfa Chamber of Commerce office and asked when was the best time to see the lights. “Oh, any time after dark,” we were told by a pleasant woman. “Any day of the year, really,” she added as we inquired deeper. She was apparently perpetuating the mystery.

We heard you can boondock where the lights are seen most and found the Marfa Lights Viewing Area nine miles east of town right on Highway 90. It’s really quite a nice rest area designed by local high school students, with ample parking, rest rooms, and interpretive displays. We settled in with a front row seat, and waited for dark.

One of the first the first signs that there would be no sign of mysterious lights that night was the half dozen or so displays themselves. They pointed out distant mountain ranges and discussed regional flora and fauna. But only one had any information about the lights themselves. And if you read the small faded printout pinned in the corner of the display case the truth was revealed.

Chances of witnessing the Marfa lights on any given night are quite rare. In fact, based on less than 30 viewings in 2002, your chances of actually seeing any anomalies in the sky after dark are about eight percent. This number decreases with each hour past sunset. But we were determined to try.

The freezing wind finally forced inside after nearly two hours searching the skies for anything other than oncoming headlights. Supposedly, people have reported seeing the lights since the late 1880s. Explanations range from weather related phenomena and human pranksters, to the piezoelectric effects of thermal expansion in quartz of the distant mountains. But we have developed our own theory …

The reports from the 1880s were fabricated some time in the 1970s when interest in Marfa, Texas had fallen. The hullabaloo from the days of George Stevens filming Giant in Marfa 20 years earlier was all but forgotten, and locals needed a reason to bring back the tourists. It worked. They’re still coming now. And they are still told they can see the lights any day after dark. Yeah, right.