On the Road

My wife’s sister is off to grad school at The University of Illinois in the Fall, and needed to find an apartment. So she decided to take the 12+ hour drive to Champaign, IL, and we decided to tag along, and make a mini-road trip out of it. Thanks to Roadside America, I found a few fun stops along the way, and this post is dedicated to beauty that is, The Road Side Attraction.  Check out the photo gallery below.  You can click on any of the picks to check out all the snapshots from the trip on Flickr.

[CHEF'S DINER] Our first stop, heading out of PA, was to grab some breakfast at Chef Mcjon’s Downingtown Diner. Around an hour outside downtown Philadelphia, this diner is built on the site of the original diner from the 1958 Steve McQueen film, “The Blob.” The original diner was moved to Hollywood around 1960, and in 1966 this new eatery went up in its place. There are still plenty of Blob references, my favorite being, “Uncle Bunky’s Nationally known BBQ Blobwich Sandwich.”

[COFFEE POT-SHAPED BUILDING] Our next stop was in the town Bedford, PA, home of the Coffee pot-shaped building. Built in 1927, the 18-ft. high Coffee Pot was originally a lunch place adjoining a gas station. In 1937 it became a bar, with a hotel built in behind it. The preservationists managed to save the Coffee Pot in 2003. The Bedford County Fair Association paid $1 to purchase it, and the Lincoln Highway Heritage Park Corridor, an attraction preservation group, spent $80k to move the building across the street to the fairgrounds and restore it in 2004.

[BIG JIM] Just off the highway in Bentleyville, Pennsylvania is where you can find “Big Jim” the Metal Cowboy. This 20-foot-tall steel (fabricated and found material) work of art stood guard outside the town of Charleroi, Pennsylvania, in Speers Borough, since its completion in 1978. This statue was entirely handmade by artist James C. Krutz, Sr. His neckerchief is made of a yard-wide swath of steel, hand-formed to resemble folds of cloth. Hand-cut fringe borders the buckskin jacket and the wide-brimmed 10-gallon hat with its turned up edges. Several years back the family-owned welding store closed, and in 2007, Big Jim was bought my a hotel chain and now stands in front of the Best Western in Bentleyville, PA.

[TOPIARY FRENCH PEOPLE] Next up is a stop in Columbus, OH at Old Deaf School Park, where one can enter into the magical world that is a topiary garden. This one is very special, as it’s a recreation of Georges Seurat’s impressionist painting, A Sunday Afternoon On The Island of La Grande Jatte. Sponsored by the Columbus Recreation and Parks Department, Columbus artist James T. Mason conceived and designed this Topiary Garden which was created in 1989 on the grounds of a former school for the deaf. Very cool stuff.