HOWDY!! We're Dwayne and Rhonda, we live in a small town in eastern Kansas, and for the last nine years we have spent every vacation day, three-day weekend and quite a few sick days (don't tell Dwayne's boss) driving the two-lane roads of this great country looking for GIANT THINGS. Giant men. Giant animals. Buildings shaped like other things. Places where the water runs uphill. If it has a billboard 40 miles out and a gift shop attached, we have either been there or we are going.

Rhonda keeps the log (a spiral notebook, seven of them now). Dwayne takes the pictures and does the driving. We started this page in '98 to get the log out of the notebooks and into the world, and we're about a third of the way through typing it. Our son set up the page and then went back to college, so if something looks funny, that's us.

Photos: Dwayne has about 900 of them in shoe boxes and we do not own a scanner. Rhonda's descriptions will have to do for now, and she says they're better than the pictures anyway.

We rate every attraction from one to five stars for TACKINESS. Now understand, on this page tackiness is a compliment. Five stars means somebody had a crazy idea, built it with their own hands, painted it bright colors, put up a sign, and has been keeping it going out of love and stubbornness ever since. One star means it's fine but a museum could have done it. We are not a museum kind of family.

	Nice. Worth the stop if you're passing.
	Worth a 20-mile detour.
	Worth a 100-mile detour. Buy the postcard.
	Plan the trip around it. Buy the T-shirt.
	A NATIONAL TREASURE. We have been back more than once. Rhonda cried (Dwayne says she didn't; she did).

Also noted: Admission (free is best, cheap is fine), Gift Shop (yes/no and quality of the snow globes), and Quarters Needed (see Tips).

Cadillac Ranch — Amarillo, Texas
5 stars. Admission: free. Gift shop: no. Quarters: no, but BRING SPRAY PAINT.
Ten old Cadillacs buried nose-first in a wheat field, tail fins in the air, all leaning the same direction, off the interstate on the west side of Amarillo. It was put up in 1974 by some art fellows with a rich patron, and they moved the whole thing a couple of miles farther out of town in 1997 because the city was growing up around it. You walk out across the field from the frontage road. The best part: EVERYBODY paints on them. It's allowed, it's expected. There were people out there with spray cans the morning we came and the cars change colors every week. Rhonda wrote our names and the date on a fin in pink. It's gone by now. That's the beauty of it. Visited 1993, 1996, and this past May.

Wall Drug — Wall, South Dakota
5 stars. Admission: free. Gift shop: IT IS A GIFT SHOP. Quarters: yes, plenty.
You know about Wall Drug before you know you know about it, because the billboards start hundreds of miles out in every direction and don't stop. It started as one little drugstore in the '30s that put up signs on the highway offering FREE ICE WATER to the folks driving to the Black Hills in the heat, and it worked, and it kept working, and now it's a whole block of stores under one roof with a cafe, a chapel, a giant jackalope you can sit on, a big animated T. rex out back that roars, and yes, free ice water and coffee for a nickel. We spent four hours there. Rhonda got a donut. Dwayne got his picture with the jackalope, which he does every time. Visited 1991, 1995, 1998.

The Corn Palace — Mitchell, South Dakota
4 stars. Admission: free. Gift shop: yes. Quarters: no.
A big building downtown with onion domes and minarets, and the whole outside is covered in murals made out of CORN. Real ears of corn, in different natural colors, nailed up in patterns, along with grasses and grain. They redo it every year with a new theme, so it's never the same twice. Inside it's the town's auditorium (they play basketball in it). The birds eat some of it over the winter, which the guide said is part of the plan. Rhonda says 4 not 5 because the town is a little too tidy about it. Dwayne says 5. The log says 4. Visited 1995 and 1998.

World's Largest Ball of Twine — Cawker City, Kansas
5 stars, and it's OURS (well, it's in our state). Admission: free. Gift shop: the stores on the main street sell twine postcards. Quarters: no.
It's a ball of twine. It's the size of a small shed. It sits under its own little open-sided pavilion right on the main street of a town of a few hundred people in north-central Kansas, and a farmer named Frank Stoeber started it in 1953 and it has never stopped growing, because visitors and the town keep adding twine to it — there's a twine-a-thon every August where anybody can wrap on some more. We've added twine three times. Now, there is a gentleman's disagreement with a town in Minnesota that has a ball one man made all by himself, and which is bigger depends on who's measuring and what for. We say: go see both. We say Cawker City's is the People's Twine. Visited more times than we can count; it's an hour and a half from the house.

Carhenge — Alliance, Nebraska
5 stars. Admission: free. Gift shop: no. Quarters: no.
Stonehenge, but the stones are old cars, painted gray, stood on end and stacked in a circle in a field north of town, built in 1987 by a man as a memorial to his father. It's the same size and layout as the real one in England. We were the only people there at sunset and it was the quietest, strangest, best fifteen minutes of the 1997 trip. Rhonda cried. Dwayne admits it this time.

Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox — Bemidji, Minnesota
4 stars. Admission: free. Gift shop: yes, at the visitor center next door. Quarters: no.
The grandaddy of all the giant statues, from 1937, standing on the lake shore downtown. Paul is 18 feet tall and built like a fireplug, with a little mustache, and Babe is right next to him, blue as a swimming pool. Every giant fiberglass man on every highway in America owes something to this fellow, and he's concrete. Visited 1994.

The Blue Whale — Catoosa, Oklahoma
5 stars. Admission: free. Gift shop: no. Quarters: no.
A big smiling blue whale, with a slide coming out of its side, sitting in a pond right by old Route 66 east of Tulsa. A man built it in the early '70s for his wife, and for years the local kids swam there. It's not open for swimming any more, but the town has been fixing it up, and that smile. THAT SMILE. Visited May 1999 — see Mileage.

The Muffler Men (various)
3 to 5 stars depending. Admission: free, they're standing by the road.
"Muffler man" is the collectors' name for the giant fiberglass men, 18 to 25 feet tall, that were made in the '60s to stand in front of muffler shops, tire stores and restaurants, usually holding something — a muffler, an axe, a tire, a hot dog. The same company made most of them from the same mold, so once you've seen one you start recognizing the face everywhere. Some were turned into cowboys or Indians or spacemen with a new head and a paint job. Rhonda's log has 31 of them so far, from Illinois to Arizona. Our favorite is the one holding a giant hot dog in Illinois (Rhonda: 5 stars, "he looks so happy"). Dwayne likes the lumberjacks. Once you start counting these you can't stop, so be warned.

The Mystery Spot — Santa Cruz, California
4 stars. Admission: a few dollars. Gift shop: yes, and get the bumper sticker. Quarters: no.
The original tilted-house gravity spot, up in the redwoods, going since 1940. Balls roll uphill, the guide stands at an angle, your brother-in-law gets shorter. It's a trick of the crooked floors and it's a wonderful trick. The bumper sticker is on the Buick to this day. Visited 1996, the year we went all the way to the ocean.

These are the ones we love best. Nobody put them in a guidebook. You find them by asking the waitress. Some of these folks asked us not to say exactly where they are, so we've kept it to the general neighborhood.

The Two-Story Outhouse — a small town in the Ozarks, Missouri.
It's a two-story outhouse. Behind a feed store. Built as a joke by the owner's grandfather and kept painted ever since. There's a sign explaining how it works that we will not repeat here. The owner came out and told us the whole story and gave Dwayne a free cap. Five stars, would be six.

Gravity Gulch — western Arkansas, a hand-lettered sign off the state highway.
A retired couple's back yard where a ball rolls uphill on a board, $2 a car, and the lady sells fudge. The fudge is the attraction. Three stars for the gulch, five for the fudge.

The Giant Thimble — a crossroads town in north Texas.
A twelve-foot thimble, welded out of sheet metal by a fabric store owner's husband, out front of the fabric store, with real dimples. The store's gone but the thimble is still there, and somebody keeps it painted silver. A woman at the gas station said "Oh, you came for the thimble" like we were the fourth car that week, and maybe we were.

The Concrete Dinosaur Family — along a county road in Nebraska.
A farmer has been making dinosaurs out of concrete and chicken wire in his front pasture since the '70s. There are eleven. They are not accurate. One is wearing a hat. He's working on a twelfth and he let Dwayne hold the trowel. Five stars and a place in our hearts.

The Largest Rocking Chair in the County — a furniture store in Iowa.
They're honest about it: in the county. It's a big chair. You can sit in it. Two stars, one extra for honesty.

The Wishing Toilet — a truck stop in New Mexico.
A toilet, gold-painted, on a pedestal in the parking lot, with a sign that says make a wish. Coins in the bowl. We don't know either. Three stars for nerve.

1. CALL AHEAD. Half of the little ones are only open "in season," and in season means Memorial Day to Labor Day, and it's September now. We have driven 200 miles to a locked gate more than once. Get the number from the phone book at the motel, or from the chamber of commerce, and call.
2. BRING QUARTERS. A whole roll. Coin-operated viewers on the overlook. The animated displays that only move when you put a quarter in. Parking meters in the tourist towns. The pay phone to call ahead (see #1). The mechanical fortune teller. Quarters run the roadside.
3. Ask the waitress. Every diner waitress in America knows where the giant thing is. Order pie, then ask.
4. Check the brochure rack at the motel. The stuff nobody prints in a guidebook prints its own brochure. Take one of each.
5. Don't believe billboard mileage. "ONLY 12 MILES" means whatever they want it to mean.
6. Get off the interstate. The old two-lanes (the old U.S. highways) are where the attractions were built, because that's where the cars used to be. The interstate goes past everything.
7. Buy the postcard. Even if you take your own picture. Especially if the postcard is old and faded and they still have a rack of them. Our friend Evelyn (see the ring below) turned us on to this and now we have a shoe box of those too.
8. Sign the guestbook, buy something, say thank you. Most of these places are one person and a dream. Your two dollars keeps the paint on the dinosaur.
9. Take the road atlas AND the state map. The state highway maps from the welcome center are free and show the little roads better than the atlas.
10. Write it down that night. By the third day, the giant fish and the giant pheasant blur together. Rhonda's rule: nobody sleeps till the log is done.

The car: a 1991 Buick with 168,000 miles, most of them ours, and a bumper that's more sticker than bumper.

One more trip planned for October (Wisconsin: we have a tip about a giant muskie) before the Buick gets put up for the winter. All-time log total: 487 attractions in 23 states.

Places we haven't made it to yet. If you've been, e-mail us and tell us how many stars.

• The giant catsup bottle in Illinois (it's a water tower — Dwayne's been talking about it since 1992)
• The Jolly Green Giant statue in Minnesota
• The other ball of twine in Minnesota (we owe it a fair look)
• Any of the big dinosaur parks out West
• South of the Border, on the Carolina line — we've never been east of the Mississippi with the log, and that would be the reason to go
• A restaurant shaped like a hat, a coffee pot, or an animal. We've done one shaped like a shoe. We want the set.

Do you know a giant thing? Especially the little ones nobody's written up. Tell us. We will drive to it. That's not a figure of speech.

• Postcards from the 1950s — Evelyn's collection. The motels we drive past, the way they looked new.
• Neon Nights: Old Signs of the Mother Road
• Hank & Peggy's Great American Road Trip
• Truck Stop Reviews — Big Ed knows where the pie is.
• The Corvette Diaries
• Life on a Cattle Ranch, Nebraska Sandhills — the country the dinosaurs live in.
• The whole Route66 neighborhood