Another Roadside Attraction

[With apologies and respect to Tom Robbins.]

J. was a little annoyed. I was making a three point turn — well, in truth, it was closer to a 12 point turn — in a gravel and mud driveway lined on both sides by tire eating gullies. The road was fast and winding — it was hard to see oncoming traffic from either direction. “Trust me,” I insisted, “it’s worth it. See, there’s this giant yellow dinosaur leaning up against a shed… really, we have to go back.”

It’s a long time ago now, but I still remember coming across a giant concrete head somewhere in Montana. It was about 15 feet tall and sprayed gold. The accompanying plaque, probably a xeroxed sheet stuffed into a sleeve protector and stapled on to plywood, proclaimed it the “second largest head of Abraham Lincoln in the world.” What’s not to like about that? Last summer found me admiring any number of world’s largest objects — more presidents, a buffalo, a giant cow. There’s a frying pan out on the Washington coast and, inland and a bit south, a giant egg, the two separated by some cruel act of fate or feuding families. In Idaho, I sat at the base of the world’s largest potato. In Klamath Falls, Oregon, I stared up at Paul Bunyan and his enormous blue ox Babe, and in somewhere in Canada, I parked my car in front of an enormous T-Rex, his right foot the size of my Toyota Tercel.

Rich’s Art Yard in Centralia, Washington, is a assemblage of Styrofoam and re-bar and plastic garbage all stuck together in a crazy mess of, well, what is that place? While my real estate agent dragged me around from house to sad house, I peered over the fence and out windows that badly needed replacing into the Walker Rock Garden, a mosaic playground of river rock and obsession. In a blinding downpour of hail and rain, a friend and I drove the Enchanted Highway in North Dakota, stopping at each of the roadside sculptures that were big, sure, but more than that — plus, at the end of the road, there’s a “put in a quarter and make it go” contraption that’s got whirlygigs and oh, just go to North Dakota. J and I took a pocket full of quarters into the calliope museum, where on earth were we, was it Wyoming? And I have creepy memories of a letterpress museum somewhere in California run by a guy who seemed to have some scary political tendencies even while having a remarkable collection of old wood type.

I did not mean to veer in to a catalog of my roadside adventures. What I meant to say was that last weekend, after navigating a messy turn around without incident, we wandered the grounds of Eaglemount Rockeries. According to the hard-to-read hand out, the first knee high stone structure was built in 1948 — there was apparently, a pressing need for a windmill in the front garden and Mrs. Wolfer set herself to addressing that issue, and many, many others.

The mistress of the property found she had a liking for building these little structures and now, there are dozens of them all around the front of the main house. Her interests took a turn towards the historical and she began creating tableaus of pioneer life — there’s a school house and a jail and a bootlegger and a whole crew of Native Americans, most of whom look as though they are buried in the ground up to their waists because they are torsos only. There’s a to scale map of Washington State, and some regional icons — a few Japanese temples, a mini Mount Rushmore, a Sphinx and her companion pyramids. We squelched around in the wet grass, reading signs made out of those plastic labels — you know, the ones that punch the letters in all caps on to tape that you then peel the backing off, what are they called? I stood beside the bright yellow dinosaur, he had a green pattern up his spine and an appealing grin, his chin was propped up on the edge of the stone jailhouse.

Eaglemount Rockeries has a new owner now but it’s still free to stop in a poke around. It’s sort of on the way to Port Townsend, sort of, if you detour a little. There are a couple of cottages you can rent if you can’t get enough of the place. It’s actually easy to miss if you’re not paying attention — if you’re heading south and you pass a grinning yellow dinosaur, you’ve got too far. It’s easier if you’re driving north — you’ll see the sign for the motel and a flag waving braid wearing concrete “Indian” welcoming you.

The badly xeroxed flier calls Eaglemount Rockeries a “place to come and see for free.” That’s an understated sales pitch for an hour or so of taking a tour of someone else’s imagination. If you’re out that-a-way and have a fondness, as I do, for the obscure and wacky, take a detour and stop for a while.

There are a few more pics here.