Silly America is a roadside attractions blog designed to help travelers find unique stops for their next road trip. The website is a tribute to the great American road trip, devoted to all that is odd in America: roadside attractions, tourist traps, peculiar destinations, bizarre events, road food, fun festivals, and more! It’s a travel website and trip planner for those seeking an offbeat road trip.
Antonio Pasin built his first wooden wagon in 1917. They quickly became popular among his clients as he sold the toys around Chicagoland. In 1923, his company was officially born as “Liberty Coaster Company” and, to speed up production and offset costs, he began selling steel versions. In 1930 the company was renamed Radio Steel…
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Once upon a time, there were eight shell-shaped gas stations in North Carolina: seven in Winston-Salem and one in nearby Kernersville. Built in the 1930s by Quality Oil, a local distributor of Shell oil, these Shell Oil gas stations were meant to serve as hard-to-miss advertisements to entice customers to stop by. And boy were…
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India is full of trash. Everywhere I go there seem to be piles of trash building up at the sides of the road. It’s difficult almost anywhere to find somewhere to throw your garbage that isn’t just on the ground. There just aren’t many trash cans. But in Kochi, there was a pleasant surprise. Not…
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Many towns in America profess themselves to be a “home of the white squirrels”: pockets of suburbia where these curious albino squirrels seem to congregate. Olney, Illinois is one of the most boastful. About 200 or so of the tiny mammals currently inhabit the town. At its peak though, there were around 1,000. Every fall…
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Road trip Play List! Sometimes I like to share my favorite songs to drive to. You know those songs, the ones that make you crank up the volume, crank down the windows, and sing at the top of your lungs on the highways and rural byways. Today’s road trip play list song is Pink Moon…
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Today’s roadside attraction is the greatest thing since sliced bread! Actually…it is sliced bread! Chillicothe, Missouri is the “Home of Sliced Bread.” It’s the town where the one intention every other invention has to live up to was first sold. The Rohwedder Bread Slicer was first put into use there by the Chillicothe Baking Company in…
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Is there life on Mars? We may never know. Is there life in Mars, Pennsylvania? There certainly is. Mars, Pennsylvania is a town with an unusual name. But the citizens embrace their celestial moniker and even erected a roadside attraction in it’s honor: a real-life flying saucer in Mars, Pennsylvania. This spaceship saucer looks like…
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I remember, as a child, having a plastic solo cup dispenser in our bathroom. You’d pull from it, one at a time, teeny tiny paper cups. Those teeny tiny paper cups held just enough water for a quick swig before bed or a rinse after brushing your teeth. They didn’t need to be any bigger….
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The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway (also known as the “Toy Train”) took it’s first winding journey in 1881. The Unesco World Heritage site still runs today, slowly making it’s way through the small towns of the Himalayas. Riding on the toy train is probably as close as you can get to a real-life Little Engine That…
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