Author: flipper01

The Thing?

Yesterday we witnessed ‘The Thing?’ just ouside of Pheonix, we can’t tell you exactly what it is, because that would make it a something rather than a thing. We met up with a guy called Jerry Bone who runs the place wearing a white cowboy hat (which is rock solid and apparently how “decent sixty dollar” hats are supposed to be, unlike my $2.99 floppy straw version I got from a gas station) and loves to entertain people with all the curiosities and mysteries that lay behnd the ominous door in the back of the gift shop. Jerry took us on a tour past giant dead spiders, old tractors, Hitler’s car, model Indians and then finally to the chest that contains the final resting place of… dun dun DUN… The Thing? (the question mark is very important).

The Metal Corral

Today was just supposed to be a driving day, getting a few hundred miles from Utah down to Arizona, but as we pulled off the freeway just outside Phoenix we spotted a fenced off piece of scrub land full of metal animal sculptures. So we went to check it out. In the middle of all these horses, elephants, giraffes, knights and monkeys playing in iron beds was a old trailer from which emerged Arturo Castellanos Velázquez, the artist responsible for the animals. It turns out he makes all sorts of customised wrought iron stuff, from doors to staircases (and giant cowboys riding bucking broncos). He didn’t speak English but we still managed to have a kind of chat. We had a quick look around and then escaped the 110 degree heat back into the van.

Day Off

Everything is going to plan, so we had a day off (which was also part of the plan). After leaving Jerry at the Wonder Tower we headed west, past Denver and through the Rockies to a place called Glenwood Springs. It’s just next door to Aspen so it’s all jolly nice. We went up to an amusement park which had a pretty sweet bobsleigh ride down the side of the mountain and spent the afternoon white water rafting. There wasn’t much white water, but it was all jolly nice (like the rest of this place), and our guide, Bobbie, happened to have some beer with her and took us to a hot spring pool on the banks of the river for a dip. All nice and relaxing, just what we needed. Now we’re off to eat, the road beacons in the morning.

Jerry’s Wonderful Tower

This is Jerry Chubbuck and he has a tower full of wonderful things in Genoa, Colorado – so many wonderful things the tower is called the Wonder Tower. Some would call these things junk, and they may well be right, but when you see so much of this ‘junk’ in one place, and this junk includes things like a bull castration device, a two-headed calf, thousands of Indian arrow heads, a snake pit, a rooster castration device (yeah, there’s a theme there), dinosaur poo and so much more, it’s a bit more than just junk. The tower itself has a viewing platform at the top that allows you to view 6 states at once. To say standing at the top of the tower felt safe would be like saying eating in American dinners everyday for a month is actually quite healthy, and that’s why people have different diets to improve their bodies or go through a cosmetic procedure for this same purpose.

World’s Biggest Pheasant

We needed to make up some millage so we spend a whole day speeding through South Dakota, stopping for a breather at a town called Huron – which proudly boasts as being the home to the world’s largest pheasant. As far as we know there’s no real story behind why it’s there other than shooting pheasants to death seems to be very popular in that area. There is however a legend:

Once there was a giant ring-neck pheasant whom all the hunters wanted to claim as a trophy. One day a young boy happened upon the Giant Pheasant and, because of its magnificent beauty, spared the bird’s life. In exchange, the pheasant promised to remain always at that spot, until every person in the world has seen the World’s Largest Pheasant and his [smaller] offspring.

We’ve been pulled over by the cops twice today, once for some odd rule us foreigners didn’t know about, and once because we were speeding, although we were not, it’s more likely because we had out of town plates. This really is middle America folks.

The Biggest Ball of Twine (kinda)

OK, we had to see it, it’s the Biggest Ball of Twine, well not really, the biggest one is somewhere else and is a tiny bit bigger, but that one was rolled by any passing joe, the ball we visited (in Darwin, Minnesota) was all rolled by one person, a guy called Francis Johnson, so it’s really the only one that counts. Unfortunately Francis is long dead, and there was no-one there to give us the tour so our visit was a bit fleeting, seeing as we were about 300 miles behind schedule. I’m pretty sure we covered all angles, I mean it’s just a large ball in a gazebo, what else is there to say?

(of course this is twine we’re talking about here, and not string, that a whole other deal, obviousley).

Meeting Dr. Evermore

Today we visited Dr. Evermore and Lady Eleanor and had a tour of the Doctor’s massive machine; The Forevertron, which (once complete) will blast him into space in a glass egg within a copper frame to live forever on a beam of light. There are many other machines and characters to help him on his way such as the Gravitron which will remove all the water and excess weight from his body, as well as a viewing platform for Queen Victoria and Prince Albert to view the launch and a huge band of birds to play a tune during the fantastical celebrations on the day.

Dr. Evermore is actually Tom Every, Lady Eleanor is his ex-wife (Eleanor), and the Forevertron is part of Tom’s huge sculpture garden full of steam-punk scrap metal sculptures all involved in the fantasy story Tom has created around Dr.Evermore’s journey into space. He’s been building it for 25 years and it really is pretty damn huge and pretty amazing to wander around. Tom and Eleanor spoke to us for 4 hours, bought us drinks, gave us a door knob, a signed book, dvd and two letters we’re waiting for an appropriate time to open. It was hard to leave the place but we had 5 hours to drive today as we are running a little behind today.

During this five hour drive we came up with a new idea for a title for this thing, what do you guys think of ‘The World’s Greatest Documentary (What We’ve Made)’? Answers in the comments below please.

Painting into History

Today we met Mike Carmichael and his wife Glenda at their home in Alexandria, Indiana. Mike has been painting a baseball for the last 30 years, it is now the biggest ball of paint in the world with 21,201 coats of paint, and we got to paint coat number 21,201! Each coat is a different colour from the last, we choose yellow, mike handed us the rollers and the rest is now history. We signed the ledger detailing when we painted the coat, and what colour, while Glenda prepared our official certificates. Then, to our surprise, Mike offered to take us all out for lunch, which we gleefully accepted. Mike and Glenda led us to a nice little local dinner and we had a slap up feed. Mike and Glenda were great, really friendly and generous – we left Mike to return to the ball and add another a few coats, that man knows a thing or two about dedication.