November 25, 2018

 Have you ever been in a phase of life that found you taking a road trip, up or down or back and forth, on the same roads, over and over and over for a period of time?

I think we all probably have, whether that’s driving from the country into the city and back again, or vice versa, or driving between two cities for work, or even doing some sort of cross country trek to visit family or friends more than once.

It doesn’t really matter where that is in North America; chances are good everyone sees two things on these regular drives.

The first is roadside attractions. You know, the signposts advertising Pedroland on the North Carolina-South Carolina border, where you can buy fireworks–they used to have a full service shop where you could grab a full size grocery-style cart to pitch explosives into; bad Mexican food and even worse souvenirs to mark your drive on the I-95.

It’s been there as long as I can remember, clearly a great diversion for little kids on a long drive, as the billboards for this place start 150 or 200 miles from South of the Border in both directions. They’re filled with catchy, punny phrases to entice you to finding out what is actually underneath Pedro’s legs. It’s kitschy and tacky but if there are kids in the car, it’s also probably a necessary stop.

Or Wall drug in South Dakota. Same deal–billboards for miles and miles for a place known for its five cent coffee and free water as well as not-for-free Buffalo burgers and Black Hills gold (as in “there’s gold in them thar hills!”). A fun place to stop for sure, and I’ve done so many times. My mom even bought me a jackalope there for my birthday a few years ago, and he’s a beauty.

But those are the stops right off the Interstate–super convenient, and usually super busy. What about the ones that are a little harder to find… like the world’s biggest ball of twine in Kansas? Or the Roswell UFO crash site–which I just found out was open for the first time in more than 70 years to the public? That one might be easy… if Roswell itself wasn’t so far off the beaten track.

You have to know where to go, and perhaps go out of your way to see the roadside attraction nearest to where I grew up. The Big Duck, meant to highlight the significance of Long Island duckling to the local economy, has moved around a bit, but today sits on a back road–one that locals take all the time, but I promise you the city people stick to the highways in the mad rush to get back and forth from New York to the Hamptons. And they probably never stopped to see the duck, and they surely don’t know that his little red eyes that light up at night are the tail lights from a ’55 Chevy.

Bottom line is that we always seem to be in a hurry when we see the signs that tell us to stop and have a look at something interesting. Speaking of ducks, I did see a sign once for a decoy museum in Havre de Grace Maryland, that I still hope to go back to one day…

The other thing we can’t avoid seeing when we’re driving is roadkill.

Sure, we may be able to dodge being the responsible party ourselves, but my guess is that at some point during your driving career, especially if you’re North of 50, you’ve been unfortunate enough to take out a little critter. Not as unfortunate as the critter, mind you, but you know what I mean. It might have been a bird or a mouse; some of us have been really unlucky in her collided with something bigger than a squirrel or a rabbit. Or even a…ahem…coyote. But that’s a story for another day.

I remember the first time I did the driving tour of eastern Texas. To this day I have never seen a live armadillo, but I can sure tell you they are the squirrels of the South when it comes to not making it across the highway.

And I know I always feel sad when I see a little guy on the side of the road.

But what happens to all of that wayward wildlife? I always assumed it was picked up eventually by a highway crew and carted away to, I don’t know, I guess a special repository for roadkill?

What a sad end.

Hey wait–what if you could combine these two things–dead critters and roadside attractions?

Say hello to the Gopher Hole Museum of Torrington AB.

It’s not a big place, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s about 15 minutes off the highway that runs between Edmonton and Calgary. And for a couple of decades I drove past the sign that advertised the museum in the town, always in a hurry.

A few years ago on a Sunday afternoon my friend Kim and I decided to go and have a look.

We drove up to Torrington, which from Calgary, takes about an hour and a half.

It’s a quiet little town, with only a few shops, including one run by an incredible chocolate maker named Bob. His company is called Bob Big Boy chocolates and the packaging is priceless; It’s a photo of him as little boy, with a fancy suit and curly hair, all a little Lord Fauntleroy, to whom he likens himself on the packaging.

And the chocolate is killer. Coconut and milk chocolate, dark chocolate with nuts, massive peanut butter cups. Yep, we tried them all.

After our visit with Bob, we headed over to the museum. That’s all there was left to do. It’s a little place, but then, so are the gophers.

We clearly weren’t the first people to visit; in fact, they have one of those maps where people stick a pin in their hometown and it was jammed.

There was a lady there who took our $2.00 admission and, before inviting us into the darkened room, she explained that all of what we were about to see was roadkill. Fixed up roadkill. Which meant the gophers were not killed to be part of a show; rather, starting in the mid 90’s their little bodies were rescued from the side of the highway and given new lives, albeit probably not the ones they had or had ever imagined. They are now finishing out their days as characters in several dozen dioramas depicting what gophers do when they’re not darting across the road. You know, like playing cards, competing in the Olympics, making dinner, fishing at the fishing hole. Regular gopher stuff.

On the one hand, it was weird, in a good way.

But really, how is this weird? You go to big museums and see stuffed animals all the time. Just because they’re gophers and they were roadkill, does that make it strange? I mean how do they get the big animals on the science museums? (not that I think for one minute that someone drove their Chevy in to a woolly mammoth.)

You don’t really need more than half an hour to see the whole thing, and that’s if you spend time examining each exhibit, and taking photos.

So my advice? Slow down, take the detour, make the stop. You’ll see something new and possibly quirky and you’re probably going to have fun doing it.