Howdy folks, right now I’m sitting in a motel room somewhere in between West Virginia. We’ve begun our 3 week road trip across America to is talk to some of the people that build the roadside attractions that are dotted along the highways and freeways of this country. We filming and photographing the whole thing, and when I say ‘we’ I mean me, Jason, Richard Johnson and the Boob.
We’re at day 3 right now, we landed in New York 3 days ago, we stayed the night, picked up the hire car and got the hell out of there.
We drove 130 miles down to Margate, New Jersey to visit Lucy the Elephant (America’s oldest roadside attraction). We spoke to Richard who runs the show down there and a very nice and knowledgeable chap was he. Then Sarah (also knowledgeable, also nice) took us on a tour of Lucy’s innards, which are surprisingly spacious for an Elephant. The chats went really well and we took some pretty video.We then drove another 220 miles to Haggerstown (which is a lot like an American version of Strood) and checked into a hotel for the night. Johnson got a bit frisky with the Boob during the night, Boob is still trying to catch up on the lost sleep.
Today we drove another 200 miles see Mark Cline in Virginia and have him show us around some of his attractions; Foam Henge, Dinosaur Kingdom and Professor Kline’s Monster Museum. He’s a really nice guy (yeah, another nice person, a theme may be developing) and also pretty amazing. He’s made so much stuff over the years it’s tricky to work out where he gets the time, even if he does do it full time. He just wants to entertain people and make them happy, not a bad way to make a living. Foam Henge is a life size replica of the stone original, Dinosaur Kingdom is a sprawling adventure through the woods where giant dinosaurs attack fighters from the civil war, and the Monster Museum is a full on walk through haunted house kinda deal that’s probably one of the best I’ve been in. Mark has invited us to visit his work shop tomorrow morning, and then we’re off to see how far we can drive towards Ohio for our next stop.