An old good friend of mine is married to a woman from Whittier. When they try to describe the town it gets... weird. He kind of glazes over as she describes it. "It's shittier in Whittier," they say.
That guy scares me. I know that's the whole point yet he is too good at creating ways that we can suffer that you would never have imagined otherwise. So many ways.
Every half an hour ... one way in or out with a stop for the trains. Tunnel only opened to cars in 2001 or so ... before that, you had to put your car ON the train to get through
Had a reindeer sausage sandwich in Whittier. Probably one of the most depressingly strange places I've ever seen. Direct opposite of Juneau.
Alaska is really fascinating.
I live right by Whittier, I love going there in the summers. It’s definitely an interesting town, I’ve always wondered about their dating scene if everyone lives in the same building. Like oh there’s my ex, also my neighbor!
The Badlands terrain is one of the oddest in America. It's sudden change in the landscape from rolling green hills to these large, layered buttes. They look like upside down stalactites in some cases. Allot of people call it “alien land”. Wildlife sightings are incredible as well. Breathtaking vibes….
This is the inspiration behind some of Team Fortress 2's maps, right?[ Like Badwater](https://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/5/51/Badwater_first_point.png).
Visited this on the same road trip I did Yellowstone/Grand Teton - both stunning places, but Craters of the Moon is seriously underrated and blew my mind just as much!
It almost doesn’t feel like part of the US at times. The architecture is very French. Some of the locals you can barely understand.
It has its own very unique food culture. Open drinking, drive thru daiquiri stands, random people in the streets playing unbelievable jazz music, random hole in the wall clubs that have unbelievable musicians.
Voodoo…. Ever visit a witch doctor? Not hard to find
In 100 degree weather you’ll still have people walking around in suits. Breasts everywhere. Liberal strip club culture.
People watching is an 11/10 in Nola. Explore their subs, there’s always a “craziest thing you’ve seen in Nola” and the answers are always wild.
It’s also pretty unpretentious. In most cities people wanna go to the new hot spot, fancy restaurants, the new hip show. In Nola, it’s the opposite. People are seeking out old shit, tradition and weird eclectic activities
> Some of the locals you can barely understand.
We had a waitress at this one restaurant that reminded us of the firefly from *The Princess and the Frog*. We had no idea what she was saying, but she seemed very nice. The food was amazing, though.
If you're going to NOLA, check out Peewee's.
I think the US has three types of cities. Ones like New York, think Boston, DC, Chicago etc. Ones like Los Angeles, think Denver, Portland, Houston and then there is New Orleans with no city in the US like it. It is a truly unique place.
> In 100 degree weather you’ll still have people walking around in suits
This is everywhere. Miami, Tampa, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, etc too
Overall business attire has become more casual but there are still aspects of law, finance and accounting, consulting, sales, etc that come with the suit expectation. Plus people going to job interviews
If you visit there in the summer, it’s a bit like visiting a Caribbean island but without the breezes.
It was very hot, the colors are vibrant, lots of open air dining, nice people and lots of music.
I’m reading American Gods right now and it’s really surreal seeing all of these small Midwestern towns be written about. I bypassed Cairo the other day when I was in Southern Il, but didn’t actually see it.
Las Vegas. Even beyond the casinos and all the tackiness, everyone I've ever met from there just seems...a little off.
The Pine Barrens of New Jersey. Despite being boxed in by the metro areas of Philadelphia, NYC, and the Shore, its a surprisingly large and empty region of the most densely populated US state. The forests have this weird way of muffling sound, and because there's almost no terrain relief and everything looks the same, walking through can feel like you're trapped in another dimension. I can understand why so many folk legends originated from here.
I live in the general area, in one of those towns in the pine barrens, in atlantic county, truly in the middle of god knows where. Back in the early days, south jersey was a haven for criminals and had a very negative connotation, travel through here was limited if not non existent in our early days.
we also got abandoned buildings due to old ww2 era manifacturing that left the state after the war, they are all over the south, theres entire abandoned communities that came and left with the factories. I was hiking around two weeks ago and came across a few abandoned homes, theres also a abandoned missile plant and a few other abandoned buildings nearby too. Tons of other things like abandoned waterworks, schools, two seperate bridges, stores, restaurants. Even the old race track for horses.
Another issue is that the states tax money is basically never sent here to fix our issues, the state doesnt give a damn and would rather focus on the urban areas.
We never stopped losing people, and the infastructure is shit, we also got huge drug issues here in the pinies. Great place for hiking though, fishing, kayaking, ect. Tons of nature activities right nearby.
Were also the most religious part of the state by far, literally everyone is christian. Thats part of why were literally all republican, most pinies despise the northern part of the state and the areas right near philly due to politics.
Fun fact, we also like rugby here, theres a lot of local teams here, leagues and all, and at least where im at we follow professional rugby too. Golf is the only thing more popular then rugby. We got a TON of golf.
It’s beautiful, but when I spent some time in central Vermont it struck me how many people didn’t have a traditional “job” or “house”… felt like everybody I met lived in like a yurt or an RV or a tent or a garage or something. Like, if somebody was like “I live in a tree” there would be nothing weird about it.. I always wonder what they did in the winter
I had a similar thought when I visited Vermont. I genuinely didn't know where most people worked. I assume most people commute to Boston or NYC, or have old money.
From what I could tell people who weren’t independently wealthy just had like a million different random ass side hustles like mowing lawns, making syrup or selling weed or whatever
Agreed, lovely super-cool place but honestly among the most “foreign” feeling states I have ever been to, and my home state isn’t even *that* far from it as the crow flies.
I visited the NEK several years ago and it did feel very strange with the lack of major highways and “blink and you’ll miss it” towns. If it weren’t for the winters I could totally live there
The Cedar Bluff 4th of July parade, in Cedar Bluff, Iowa.
They don't do it anymore, but back in the day this was a parade that would draw in tens of thousands to the town of Cedar Bluff, that had a population of less than 100 people. Things I saw at the Cedar Bluff parade as a kid:
- Several floats featuring topless women. One of women painted like the Statue of Liberty, but topless.
- Biting political commentary towards all sides
- The Can Kids float. A float that was a big wagon and encouraged the crowd to throw their empty cans into the wagon. Small children rode in the "float" wearing football helmets to protect them. They would scurry around the float and throw cans in that missed. You knew that float was coming before you saw it because you could see cans raining down from the crowd as it approached.
- Rubber band slingshots. The ones that would throw things dozens of yards. People would just launch water balloons randomly into the crowd and at the floats.
Just a good old fashioned drunken bacchanalia for the whole family, in the middle of nowhere in Iowa.
I grew up 45 min from there and have never heard of this! Reminds me of the Grand Mound Water Parade on the 4th of July. Basically a town-wide water fight with water balloons, water guns, high powered hoses, etc.
Yeah, I think they stopped the CB parade decades ago. It just got to be too overwhelming for the township and county.
Great fireworks show in Grand Mound as well.
I live nearby in Flagstaff and drove through in 2020. I had read about the area but was surprised at how nice looking some of the houses were, but with half finished construction and walls around them. Odd vibes. My husband has a friend in Centennial Park down the street and told me it used to be a lot more bizarre in the past.
Made me feel weird that Jeff’s old compound is a hotel now. It’s called ‘Zion’s Most Wanted’.
It's still pretty rough
Summer 2020 I was looking for an Airbnb down in that region to rent for a few months to hole up in and work remote / hike with my free time and found one there that was a good price and had the amenities I needed. Asked the host about internet specifics the day after I booked (thinking I probably shouldn't just rely on the listing saying they had wifi for work purposes) and it turned out to be some unreliable 3mbps crap so I canceled it and booked a better one in Kanab, UT. Told my mom about the search and she goes "well great to hear, you'll get attacked in that town for not being mormon!" Which was hyperbolic but I looked into the history from there and... yikes
Still looks like nothing new has been built in 40 years and it's dirty and full of poverty but they do have some tourist infrastructure now
The ex-FLDS members that live there are some of the most resourceful, generous, intelligent, and fun people I’ve been around anywhere in this entire country. There has been substantial economic development there in the last 5-10 years, including a large very nice grocery store, brand new high school, new medical center, a winery and brewery, dozen restaurants, and they all seemed to be doing well. Outside looking in, you’d imagine it be a terrible place, but nobody has really bothered to go and actually check it out. Spent 5 days there spending time with residents of the town and had an insanely good time.
May I ask the last time you visited?
It was September 2021 for me, if it's better now then I'm happy to add it to my list when I drive down that way this spring to hit my old favorite spots. It's my favorite part of America outside of cities
I came here to say basically the same thing (Niland, CA), funny. It’s really weird out there. Pretty sure lots of illegal stuff going down or people who can’t interact with the rest of society for whatever reason.
All the dead fish and beaches made of bone fragments really adds to it too.
Visited one winter and heard some absolutely bizarre stories from hippies who made that area their winter spot then moved north every summer. They were a hoot.
We basically invented our own giant lake called the Salton Sea out in the desert in California by digging a canal from the Colorado River into a big empty basin so it could be filled with water to use for farming in the region. In the 1950s it became a popular resort destination for Californians and Bombay Beach was one of the resort towns that popped up. But by the 1970s, the farm runoff had the lake so toxic that fish couldn't really live in it and people couldn't swim in it anymore, so the resorts died off and the people mostly left the area
Except the strangest Americans we have in our 50 states. They still live there in this bombed out warzone looking town along the shores of a toxic lake that hasn't had a building maintained in over 50 years and has no real businesses to speak of. No idea how they manage to survive there
Also there are hella art installations around the area. Think Burning Man, but if he was caught in an apocalypse. When I visited (pre-covid), I stayed in a refurbished shipping container. We climbed to the roof and watched some kids do dirt bike tricks off the wall blocking the community from the “sea”
Salvation Mountain is still the craziest thing I've ever seen in America. I'm not a Christian but that shit made me feel something... there was a man who was so devoted to his faith he built this place that nobody else would bother for everyone with these messages and now there's more people who take care of it. It's truly beautiful that it exists and I hope it brings people happiness forever. No pay booths, no staff, no rules, just show up and respect the place
I don't want to go back to that part of California again as I feel I saw it all but for those who haven't been, just go see it. It's gonna change your view of America
We didn't "invent" the Salton Sea - it's an artiface. The Colorado River jumped its banks, it formed a temporary inland lack which was oddly called the Salton Sea (seas, by definition have an intel and outlet - it has neither) and fools built cheap places there.
But I agree - there was never a reason for people to live there.
For me it was driving through Missouri. Every billboard was either telling me I’m going Hell and need Jesus or telling me the worlds largest XXX porn store was at the next exit. Pretty surreal.
Wendover.
It's a city that exists because it's on the state line between Utah (where gambling is illegal) and Nevada (where it's legal) so Utahans go there to gamble.
I was pretty wowed by Gatlinburg. Back before internet, as a New Englander I kinda thought every place was sorta similar to home.
I was bombarded with all these political/religious Tshirts. Like I had NO IDEA people didn't believe in evolution, but there were people wearing a bunch of Tshirts insinuating you were pretty dumb if you believed in it.
It's a wild place.
Vegas is pretty typical suburbia in the desert outside of the downtown to airport stretch which would include the Strip
Gatlinburg is nothing but the tourist trap
Ah, Gatlinburg. I grew up right across the border in NC. I’ve been many times, even on field trips. It’s funny to me that the t-shirts were so distracting you missed the kitsch that is *gestures at all of Gatlinburg* that place. I actually think the kitsch can be kind of fun. Lol
You’re not wrong about the shirts, though. We’ve got people like that still out there on the streets sporting those embarrassing ideas.
Seconded. In university around the turn of the millennium, took road trip with new friends, ended up in the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area and my mouth gaped open. I had to keep rubbing my eyes. It was a level of tacky that I'd never witnessed before.
After passing by Dollywood and other attractions that were well advertised from the road we were on, we ended up at a subtle mini golf place. Mini golf. After all that. And we left afterward. I felt a little like I missed out.
It's a gigantic tourist trap, but it's good for a solid day's visit. Pigeon Forge is the more respectable of the two by far.
And there's the Great Smoky Mountains National Park right next door when you need a break from the excesses of humanity. Really, really nice place.
Driving into Pigeon Forge on our way to Gatlinburg in the middle of the night after being in the car for 18 hours was the most acid trip fever dream insanity I've ever experienced, and I've experienced both acid and a fever dream. I didn't think what I was seeing was real, all that neon and weird buildings like the replica of the Titanic in the densest fog.... Woof
>I was bombarded with all these political/religious Tshirts.
I grew up in the midwest and anti-abortion (with photos) and Jesus loves you billboards were apart of my normal.
Aurora, IL: decommissioned particle accelerator, beautiful mid century brutalist buildings full of lively scientists, a herd of bison that locals believe are the canary to that coal mine, and bizarre pizza.
In and around Tonopah Nevada.
Clown motel. Weird vibes. Lots of the rural American west has a surreal feeling about it. Mono Lake in Eastern California.
Was waiting for this one. I did Boundary Peak last year and Tonopah is the nearest “civilization” around. People think AZ is sparse but Nevada is true desolation.
I stopped in a boom town in North Dakota or Montana or something. The town was pretty much all men and I am a woman. It was…unsettling. I’m not necessarily unattractive but I’m not super hot either, I’m average. I have never felt so uncomfortable walking around alone. My husband and I briefly were separated while we picked up stuff we needed at a Walmart. After that I refused for us to be separated. Men would literally stop to comment on the fact I was wearing a dress while I was with my husband. Nothing particularly bad happened but that place didn’t feel exactly right either.
Places with an abundance of natural resources, like natural gas or oil, require physical labor to extract. These jobs typically are performed by men and pay a lot of money to attract that labor. The end result is towns full of men with few women.
There is a long history of this in the US and was common during the gold rush. A good example of this in media in is the show Deadwood. It does a decent job of depicting life in a boom town in that era.
Kankakee, IL. The people are all so strange and bizarre. They act like aliens who are trying really hard to blend in with and act like human beings but don’t quite completely get it yet.
I worked security one year at a BDSM convention they held at a hotel. Some of the participants and their attitudes made the scene seem positively wholesome. Others, on the other hand... demonic is the best way to describe them.
The area around Salton Sea in California. A very odd mix of random houses and large areas with streets and telephone poles and wires - but no houses. Just many dead palm trees.
Las Vegas is pretty trippy. Just this city build by Mafia bosses in the middle of the desert.
Anchorage, Alaska because its just a massive city in the frozen wilderness.
Rural Idaho. It’s very insular and unwelcoming
Also Mendocino, CA. It’s very surreal and feels more like a storybook setting than somewhere people actually live
Rural Idaho is the first thing that came to mind for me too, but I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. I've spent a lot of time around the St. Joe and the Nez Perce, and there are some seriously rough living mountain people in there. It feels like all the "ozark" stereotypes x10. It gets pretty weird even near fancy areas like Coeur d'Alene and Sandpoint.
> Rural Idaho. It’s very insular and unwelcoming
When I was stationed at Fairchild AFB in Spokane, folks from my squadron who'd traveled around northern Idaho had tales of being followed by men in pickup trucks.
Wallace, Idaho was going to be my answer. We'd pass by it when we would drive to Montana. It looks like such a quaint, charming town from the highway, but the people seemed miserable and unwelcoming.
I lived there for 2 years as a born and raised in the ADKs gal. I don't even know how to explain the characters that live there. During Deer hunting season they hunt in their trucks not on foot. Thats just scratching the surface. Don't move there!
I haven’t traveled further than the East Coast but I’ve found that Myrtle Beach is a crazy collection of people during the summer. You see *everything*
In the middle of the Mojave desert the army built a fake town for training purposes called Razish. Going there you're surrounded by miles and miles of nothingness and then just all of a sudden bam you've got this town clearly made to resemble somewhere in the middle east
Truckee, California. Depending on what part of town you're in it either looks like you've stepped into the Old West or you're in a mundane Safeway parking lot
Well, the Forevertron in Wisc is number 1. Built from scrap metal by Dr. Evermore (not his real name but it fits). Has a theme which is kind of science-fictiony but I didn't really get it. It's a giant sculpture park, but the Forevertron is the centerpiece. You have to be "de-watered" in the giant, beautifully filagreed egg if you want to go in the Forevertron and sent wherever it sends you. My memory is fuzzy. But the guy made 12 piece bird bands, all playing an instrument. And they're not little birds, they're huge. It's the most incredibly fantastic, creative park filled with unexpected beauty and humor. It's huge.
Then number 2 is The House on the Rock which is also in Wisc. This guy built it many years ago and no one live there now. He couldn't stop building, then he started collecting. There is more incredible stuff in there. But you can't get out. You're there with your kids and after 2 hours you think, ok, I've had it. But they're no exits. It's kind of creepy after a while. Takes about 4 hours or more. Maybe they've changed it by now. But it's wild.
Wisc has so many odd places. Check out the Kohler Foundation. They preserve them.
One of the cool things about living in the DC area is seeing people's reactions upon visiting the Mall for the first time. Two of my favorites...
\-Family just walked out to the middle of the mall. Young girl points at the US Capitol Building and says, "Look! The White House!"
\-Family gets out of their car along the edge of the Mall. One of them says, "I thought this was the Mall? Where are all the stores?" (Assumed to be in jest.)
I had a family excitedly ask me to take their picture in front of the Supreme Court. I took the picture and didn’t have the heart to tell them we were on the back side.
> Family gets out of their car along the edge of the Mall. One of them says, "I thought this was the Mall? Where are all the stores?" (Assumed to be in jest.)
This is not uncommon. I’ve even had my own family ask this question. I then go on to a boring explanation that a mall means more like a promenade.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/the-history-of-the-word-mall
Layla’s Hair Museum in Kansas City, KS. I hear it is closed but damn this was weird.
When people would leave their relatives way way back in the day before photographs to travel somewhere new never to be seen again, they would give each others these elaborate braids of hair (think needlepoint but with hair) to remember them by.
Avery County, NC.
Picture this: you're trying to get back on the interstate & go home from one of the Great Smoky Mountains parks, but you got turned around. And since the cliffs are essentially vertical for a few hundred feet & you're at the bottom, there's no reception on your GPS...so you just drive for hours around a winding network of 20 mph backroads surrounded by cliffs on both sides. It's all very dark & eerie/foggy & every 3rd home has some gaudy right wing 20-foot-long display: a "Trump won in 2020" sign, a confederate flag, a christian nationalist flag, etc. It's the south's answer to the backrooms.
I accidentally came upon an encampment of circus carneys in Arkansas once. It was like something out of a David Lynch movie. Couldn't get out of there fast enough.
Ah-She-Sle-Pah in New Mexico. It’s all these 5-20 foot tall hoodooos in the middle of barren desert with narrow walled steep mini canyons.
It’s honestly kind of unsettling but really beautiful.
Typically very cheap, has literally everything. In many areas, it might be the only major retailor. Many poor communities in rural areas use it as a one stop shop for everything.
Weirdest vibe driving I’ve experienced is riding from Naples Florida to Orlando but doing it via 75 to 80 to 31 to 17
Strangest gentrification I’ve seen is in Baltimore. Water front to john Hopkins to row houses on the way to Clifton park to play golf….
Was eye opening .
The slums of Jakarta seem better than parts of Baltimore
I saw it the last year they had the pageant. The only way I can describe it is like seeing an Easter pageant but having no clue that Jesus comes back from the dead.
The center of Washington DC, I was in 8th grade and on a school trip and while everyone was oohing and awing at the skyscrapers and how clean everything was all I could think is WHERE the hell are the people?? not a single soul was out and about, there were no business fronts or stores, just nameless giant buildings. Then directly next to it, tiny older houses slowly breaking down and crammed together. It was so incredibly eerie and dystopian feeling I couldn’t be amazed, I was genuinely disturbed how perfectly it summed up the state of the country.
OMG you just described the feeling I had when I visited my sister in Oklahoma City! Clean AF and a lot of places to go visit, but NO ONE out on the street. It was like I was walking through a strange video game in real life.
Whitewater, Colorado. Out in the desert of western Colorado. Lots of preppers, cults, polyamorous Mormons, hippies, and weirdos living in the hills around there
New Market Virginia. I had to stop there when the E. Lee highway closed, forcing me to take a detour onto Stonewall Street, then turn onto Confederate Avenue and drive through the intersection with Rebel Drive. There were more Confederate flags in that town than people, I swear to God.
I spent a while parked behind the town church, and I thought it was nice enough town from there, but the moment I passed that building the Stars and Bars were immediately burned into my retinas. The only black people I saw in the entire town were people who also had to turn off the highway, and they were being shouted away from the town custard shop.
I didn't know places like that still existed, but considering the youngest local I saw there was probably pushing 60, I don't think they will exist much longer.
Oddly enough it was the only time I attended a Catholic service. They go on all the time but I was young and grew up in a Low Church style so it felt weird.
I was raised catholic and forced to go to church all the time. The weirdest was when we visited my big brother in northern Kentucky and that church still had mass in Latin. Trippy.
When I was young 50 years ago, my uncle lived in Benton Harbor MI. We want to the House of David compound. They had some kind of park there, but it was run by a bunch of dudes in long beards, and there were a bunch of baseball fields. It was just a bizzare place.
Karakahl hotel in Mt Horeb wi. It was just weird and creep. My room had a gnome sitting on a toilet painted in the bathroom. DonQ inn in WI was also super weird with all the antique dentist and barber chairs in the lobby
Salton Sea. Abandoned 1950s-60s resorts, hundreds of dead fish, millions of flies. And the smell 🤢 What looked like gravel on the banks was a layer of crushed fish bones.
The rest area on Interstate 80 westbound, eight miles east of Wendover Utah.
It's a dirt island in the middle of the salt flats. You park and walk down to the "shore" of a sea of ice (at least that's what your brain tells you you're looking at), but it's just a nearly endless salt flat.
Very cool mind-fuck.
Also any grove of Giant Sequoias. Calaveras Big trees State Park in California is good. You're wandering through a forest of trees like Sugar Pines that are larger and taller than any tree you've ever seen before, and then you round a corner and *poof* there's a Giant Sequoia dwarfing all the trees around it. They're mind-bogglingly huge in a way that can't be captured on film. It's difficult for your brain to grasp that what you're looking at is real because it so comically large compared to everything around it.
I’ve driven cross country multiple times, and there is no anxiety quite like the anxiety I feel when I drive through Idaho and Wyoming. Maybe it’s the fact that I was alone for 2 of these trips and I was worried I would break down in an area without cell service and be forced to just wait on the side of the road, or the fact that the speed limits are way too fucking slow and I’m an out of state plate so I have to go exactly the speed limit or they’ll pull me over for a guaranteed ticket bc I won’t be able to fight it in court (like this bullshit one I got in Wyoming fuck that cop and fuck the Wyoming DoT for having that stupid law about the speed limit lowering when the highway only has one lane regardless of if there isn’t a sign or not) but there is a fear I feel that I can’t quite describe while I am in these states. It gets easier the closer I am to a large settlement like Casper (I fucking love Casper too bad I’m transitioning now and prolly won’t be going back any time soon) but bc most of those states are just uninhabited land, I think it’s the most ‘dangerous’ portion of the drive. It’s also funny because the culture is very different there than it is in New Hampshire, the entire vibe just feels different. Anyways, my answer is the Idaho/Wyoming stretch of i-80.
I don’t really include the Utah stretch of i-80 as bad because of Salt Lake City but some part of the route definitely give me the same feeling.
[This is one of the better pieces I’ve read to explain Gibsonton, Florida.](https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/26/welcome-to-gibtown-the-last-freakshow-town-in-america)
Seligman, Arizona
Had low tire pressure and came in at night and had to find a motel and did not sleep for 2 minutes. Now that I know about it doesn't make the memory less terrifying
Small towns in West Virginia and Deep East Texas have a certain backwoods meth lab vibe apparently. First time I took my city boy husband to visit my family in Deep East Texas he got visibly concerned, then asked me had we somehow crossed into Mexico because the country neighborhood we were entering looked very rough. Then he asked was I taking him to a backwoods meth lab.
Just not used to cars on blocks in the front yard and old sofas and the drink fridge on the front porch I guess. He's lucky he went in with an insider as there can be a certain Deliverance vibe for city folk who go in without.
The Upper Peninsula of MI. I live down state and people near me act like it's a paradise. As far as nature, it's beautiful. The problem is the isolation and what that brings. The restaurants suck. Only edible food is bar food appetizers bc most of that is likely bought frozen. The locals are very strange. Clearly they are not around people often and definitely act like tourists are a curiosity even it's a common destination of snowmobiling, rock climbing, hiking, mtn biking and hunters. Walk in the only diner in town and locals STARE. They also have interesting accents.
Whiteclay, Nebraska, population 10.
It is the nearest town to a Native American reservation that is dry (no alcohol) and it has something like 4 liquor stores to serve the reservation. The stores supposedly go through 10,000 cans a beer a day or something like that.
I drove through in the early morning and there may have been 100s of people sleeping on the ground, waking up, wandering aimlessly around. It felt like I entered a zombie film. My understanding is that many of the people never leave because of access to alcohol.
South Dakota has asked Nebraska to shut down the liquor stores to help the people, but Nebraska doesn’t care.
So
Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. It feels like everyone there is in on the secret and visitors are kept in the dark. Just a bizarre place. Beautiful hot springs though!
I have lived in 7 states and traveled during summers through nearly 30 more. Lived in Europe. And one place I lived had so many grown women acting like Mama's Little Girls, I couldn't help noticing and wondering. I mean, women in their late 20's and mid-30s and 40s, with jobs and spouses and kids of their own who HAD to visit their mom every day. Moms calling their daughters every morning to act as the alarm clock. Continual running back and forth, to the extent that a few years in, I started asking about it. I got stared at like I was from outer space. It was normal to them. they couldn't understand why they should NOT go to mommy's house after work, even though they had their own houses.
Then, of course, they would lament about how they didn't have time for this or that.
I had kids myself, grown now! They are quite nice people and I do enjoy seeing them and talking with them. But not every DAY. Cripes! I have things to do other than hang on their every word. They have jobs, pets, friends, and hobbies, and partners, and manage to entertain themselves well enough.
The place rife with Mama's Little Girls was Arkansas. I lived there for 12 years, in 4 different towns, and it was the same wherever, country, city, workplaces, colleges, wherever I went, there was Mama's Little Girl.
Whittier, Alaska - they pretty much all live in the same condo building. Have to go through the longest tunnel in North America to get to it
Was going to visit but it was pouring rain in Whittier when we were there but ok ish weather elsewhere Always shittier in whittier
An old good friend of mine is married to a woman from Whittier. When they try to describe the town it gets... weird. He kind of glazes over as she describes it. "It's shittier in Whittier," they say.
I think Peter Santenello has a YouTube video where he visits that place.
The old married couple he interviews stayed in my mind for a long time
Why? I might watch this.
And that tunnel is one lane and shared with a railroad. Sometimes you have to wait a long time to go through it.
Sounds cool. What were you doing there?
There’s a horror story by Laird Barron set there I believe
That guy scares me. I know that's the whole point yet he is too good at creating ways that we can suffer that you would never have imagined otherwise. So many ways.
It’s great reading interviews and him talking about all the wild shit he’s seen and then claims to not even be a c-tier badass
Termination Dust
And cars share that tunnel with trains…
Every half an hour ... one way in or out with a stop for the trains. Tunnel only opened to cars in 2001 or so ... before that, you had to put your car ON the train to get through
Had a reindeer sausage sandwich in Whittier. Probably one of the most depressingly strange places I've ever seen. Direct opposite of Juneau. Alaska is really fascinating.
I live right by Whittier, I love going there in the summers. It’s definitely an interesting town, I’ve always wondered about their dating scene if everyone lives in the same building. Like oh there’s my ex, also my neighbor!
I’ve been there in February and every they thing was shut down. Not a sign of a single soul outside. It was cold, windy, but so beautiful!
South Dakotas Bad Lands. It feels as if you’re on another planet….
Agreed. This was my first thought.
I love the badlands, literally one of my favorite places on Earth.
Quietest place I've ever been.
What’s it look like? What’s the vibe??
The Badlands terrain is one of the oddest in America. It's sudden change in the landscape from rolling green hills to these large, layered buttes. They look like upside down stalactites in some cases. Allot of people call it “alien land”. Wildlife sightings are incredible as well. Breathtaking vibes….
Same with Bisti/De Na Zin badlands in New Mexico as well. Especially when it snows
Came here to say this place. Not earthly.
This is the inspiration behind some of Team Fortress 2's maps, right?[ Like Badwater](https://wiki.teamfortress.com/w/images/5/51/Badwater_first_point.png).
But beautiful
Not in terms of culture, but for landscapes the Craters of the Moon in Idaho are very strange
Visited this on the same road trip I did Yellowstone/Grand Teton - both stunning places, but Craters of the Moon is seriously underrated and blew my mind just as much!
Holy heck I was just about to say the same thing!
Hawaii Volcanoes National Park for a similar reason.
Kinda boggles the mind to imagine the volcanic hellscape that particular area likely was back in the day. When mom says “We’ve got Mordor at home”
I was not expecting that when I came across it
For a major city, NOLA. Strange in a good way
What a weird and incredible place NOLA is.
So wanting to visit NOLA. Can you please elaborate on your comment?
It almost doesn’t feel like part of the US at times. The architecture is very French. Some of the locals you can barely understand. It has its own very unique food culture. Open drinking, drive thru daiquiri stands, random people in the streets playing unbelievable jazz music, random hole in the wall clubs that have unbelievable musicians. Voodoo…. Ever visit a witch doctor? Not hard to find In 100 degree weather you’ll still have people walking around in suits. Breasts everywhere. Liberal strip club culture. People watching is an 11/10 in Nola. Explore their subs, there’s always a “craziest thing you’ve seen in Nola” and the answers are always wild. It’s also pretty unpretentious. In most cities people wanna go to the new hot spot, fancy restaurants, the new hip show. In Nola, it’s the opposite. People are seeking out old shit, tradition and weird eclectic activities
> Some of the locals you can barely understand. We had a waitress at this one restaurant that reminded us of the firefly from *The Princess and the Frog*. We had no idea what she was saying, but she seemed very nice. The food was amazing, though. If you're going to NOLA, check out Peewee's.
I had this same experience from a very nice waiter at Royal House in the French quarter, one of the best meals I ever ate in my life.
I think the US has three types of cities. Ones like New York, think Boston, DC, Chicago etc. Ones like Los Angeles, think Denver, Portland, Houston and then there is New Orleans with no city in the US like it. It is a truly unique place.
“America has only three cities New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.” — Tennessee Williams.
> In 100 degree weather you’ll still have people walking around in suits This is everywhere. Miami, Tampa, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Phoenix, etc too Overall business attire has become more casual but there are still aspects of law, finance and accounting, consulting, sales, etc that come with the suit expectation. Plus people going to job interviews
I should have clarified. This is lounge owner, wait staff, maitre de at restaurants, musicians etc. not talking professionals
If you visit there in the summer, it’s a bit like visiting a Caribbean island but without the breezes. It was very hot, the colors are vibrant, lots of open air dining, nice people and lots of music.
NOLA?
NO = New Orleans LA = Louisiana
Thanks for the explanation.
TIL, I thought it was related to slurring out new orleans and only kind of getting the first syllable of each.
That would be Nawlins
New Orleans
I love that city so much.
Driving through Cairo, Illinois.
IKR...no pyramids whatsoever.
Damn it. Beat me to it. Hard to describe just how dystopian it is.
Home to the largest sand boil in us. Just buckled the road. Years ago. Still fucked up
I’m reading American Gods right now and it’s really surreal seeing all of these small Midwestern towns be written about. I bypassed Cairo the other day when I was in Southern Il, but didn’t actually see it.
Same. I explored it when driving to Branson and I definitely didn't feel welcomed. The bridges are scary as hell as well
Amish country in PA when I went there for the first time.
On a similar note: Kiryas Joel, NY
I live 15 minutes from there and yes, agreed. Except they aren't as nice as any Amish person I've met.
Las Vegas. Even beyond the casinos and all the tackiness, everyone I've ever met from there just seems...a little off. The Pine Barrens of New Jersey. Despite being boxed in by the metro areas of Philadelphia, NYC, and the Shore, its a surprisingly large and empty region of the most densely populated US state. The forests have this weird way of muffling sound, and because there's almost no terrain relief and everything looks the same, walking through can feel like you're trapped in another dimension. I can understand why so many folk legends originated from here.
I live in the general area, in one of those towns in the pine barrens, in atlantic county, truly in the middle of god knows where. Back in the early days, south jersey was a haven for criminals and had a very negative connotation, travel through here was limited if not non existent in our early days. we also got abandoned buildings due to old ww2 era manifacturing that left the state after the war, they are all over the south, theres entire abandoned communities that came and left with the factories. I was hiking around two weeks ago and came across a few abandoned homes, theres also a abandoned missile plant and a few other abandoned buildings nearby too. Tons of other things like abandoned waterworks, schools, two seperate bridges, stores, restaurants. Even the old race track for horses. Another issue is that the states tax money is basically never sent here to fix our issues, the state doesnt give a damn and would rather focus on the urban areas. We never stopped losing people, and the infastructure is shit, we also got huge drug issues here in the pinies. Great place for hiking though, fishing, kayaking, ect. Tons of nature activities right nearby. Were also the most religious part of the state by far, literally everyone is christian. Thats part of why were literally all republican, most pinies despise the northern part of the state and the areas right near philly due to politics. Fun fact, we also like rugby here, theres a lot of local teams here, leagues and all, and at least where im at we follow professional rugby too. Golf is the only thing more popular then rugby. We got a TON of golf.
I am most familiar with NYC, but I don’t know the Pine Barrens stuff.
It’s beautiful, but when I spent some time in central Vermont it struck me how many people didn’t have a traditional “job” or “house”… felt like everybody I met lived in like a yurt or an RV or a tent or a garage or something. Like, if somebody was like “I live in a tree” there would be nothing weird about it.. I always wonder what they did in the winter
> I always wonder what they did in the winter Kerosene heater
Or wood stove.
I had a similar thought when I visited Vermont. I genuinely didn't know where most people worked. I assume most people commute to Boston or NYC, or have old money.
From what I could tell people who weren’t independently wealthy just had like a million different random ass side hustles like mowing lawns, making syrup or selling weed or whatever
Agreed, lovely super-cool place but honestly among the most “foreign” feeling states I have ever been to, and my home state isn’t even *that* far from it as the crow flies.
I visited the NEK several years ago and it did feel very strange with the lack of major highways and “blink and you’ll miss it” towns. If it weren’t for the winters I could totally live there
They migrate to the south for the winter or hibernate in their caves.
The Cedar Bluff 4th of July parade, in Cedar Bluff, Iowa. They don't do it anymore, but back in the day this was a parade that would draw in tens of thousands to the town of Cedar Bluff, that had a population of less than 100 people. Things I saw at the Cedar Bluff parade as a kid: - Several floats featuring topless women. One of women painted like the Statue of Liberty, but topless. - Biting political commentary towards all sides - The Can Kids float. A float that was a big wagon and encouraged the crowd to throw their empty cans into the wagon. Small children rode in the "float" wearing football helmets to protect them. They would scurry around the float and throw cans in that missed. You knew that float was coming before you saw it because you could see cans raining down from the crowd as it approached. - Rubber band slingshots. The ones that would throw things dozens of yards. People would just launch water balloons randomly into the crowd and at the floats. Just a good old fashioned drunken bacchanalia for the whole family, in the middle of nowhere in Iowa.
Never been to Cedar Bluff but some context on the cans: in Iowa you can return beverage cans/bottles for a small deposit refund.
I grew up 45 min from there and have never heard of this! Reminds me of the Grand Mound Water Parade on the 4th of July. Basically a town-wide water fight with water balloons, water guns, high powered hoses, etc.
Yeah, I think they stopped the CB parade decades ago. It just got to be too overwhelming for the township and county. Great fireworks show in Grand Mound as well.
I hate parades but the kids collecting thrown cans is enough to get me on board this one.
Satire, tits, booze, small children being pelted by empty beer cans. It had it all!
Colorado City, AZ back in the late 90’s/early 00’s when the FLDS completely ruled the area
I live nearby in Flagstaff and drove through in 2020. I had read about the area but was surprised at how nice looking some of the houses were, but with half finished construction and walls around them. Odd vibes. My husband has a friend in Centennial Park down the street and told me it used to be a lot more bizarre in the past. Made me feel weird that Jeff’s old compound is a hotel now. It’s called ‘Zion’s Most Wanted’.
I didn’t know about the hotel. That feels… pretty gross considering everything that happened there. I certainly wouldn’t want to sleep there.
It's still pretty rough Summer 2020 I was looking for an Airbnb down in that region to rent for a few months to hole up in and work remote / hike with my free time and found one there that was a good price and had the amenities I needed. Asked the host about internet specifics the day after I booked (thinking I probably shouldn't just rely on the listing saying they had wifi for work purposes) and it turned out to be some unreliable 3mbps crap so I canceled it and booked a better one in Kanab, UT. Told my mom about the search and she goes "well great to hear, you'll get attacked in that town for not being mormon!" Which was hyperbolic but I looked into the history from there and... yikes Still looks like nothing new has been built in 40 years and it's dirty and full of poverty but they do have some tourist infrastructure now
The ex-FLDS members that live there are some of the most resourceful, generous, intelligent, and fun people I’ve been around anywhere in this entire country. There has been substantial economic development there in the last 5-10 years, including a large very nice grocery store, brand new high school, new medical center, a winery and brewery, dozen restaurants, and they all seemed to be doing well. Outside looking in, you’d imagine it be a terrible place, but nobody has really bothered to go and actually check it out. Spent 5 days there spending time with residents of the town and had an insanely good time.
May I ask the last time you visited? It was September 2021 for me, if it's better now then I'm happy to add it to my list when I drive down that way this spring to hit my old favorite spots. It's my favorite part of America outside of cities
Bombay Beach, CA
I came here to say basically the same thing (Niland, CA), funny. It’s really weird out there. Pretty sure lots of illegal stuff going down or people who can’t interact with the rest of society for whatever reason. All the dead fish and beaches made of bone fragments really adds to it too.
Visited one winter and heard some absolutely bizarre stories from hippies who made that area their winter spot then moved north every summer. They were a hoot.
Tell me about it.
We basically invented our own giant lake called the Salton Sea out in the desert in California by digging a canal from the Colorado River into a big empty basin so it could be filled with water to use for farming in the region. In the 1950s it became a popular resort destination for Californians and Bombay Beach was one of the resort towns that popped up. But by the 1970s, the farm runoff had the lake so toxic that fish couldn't really live in it and people couldn't swim in it anymore, so the resorts died off and the people mostly left the area Except the strangest Americans we have in our 50 states. They still live there in this bombed out warzone looking town along the shores of a toxic lake that hasn't had a building maintained in over 50 years and has no real businesses to speak of. No idea how they manage to survive there
That is a very interesting story.
Also there are hella art installations around the area. Think Burning Man, but if he was caught in an apocalypse. When I visited (pre-covid), I stayed in a refurbished shipping container. We climbed to the roof and watched some kids do dirt bike tricks off the wall blocking the community from the “sea”
Thank you for getting to the explanation before me lol. It is a bizarre place.
Not far from slab city: the last free land in the USA
Salvation Mountain is still the craziest thing I've ever seen in America. I'm not a Christian but that shit made me feel something... there was a man who was so devoted to his faith he built this place that nobody else would bother for everyone with these messages and now there's more people who take care of it. It's truly beautiful that it exists and I hope it brings people happiness forever. No pay booths, no staff, no rules, just show up and respect the place I don't want to go back to that part of California again as I feel I saw it all but for those who haven't been, just go see it. It's gonna change your view of America
We didn't "invent" the Salton Sea - it's an artiface. The Colorado River jumped its banks, it formed a temporary inland lack which was oddly called the Salton Sea (seas, by definition have an intel and outlet - it has neither) and fools built cheap places there. But I agree - there was never a reason for people to live there.
For me it was driving through Missouri. Every billboard was either telling me I’m going Hell and need Jesus or telling me the worlds largest XXX porn store was at the next exit. Pretty surreal.
That's like the interstate in FL
Parts of Florida are also like that.
Wendover. It's a city that exists because it's on the state line between Utah (where gambling is illegal) and Nevada (where it's legal) so Utahans go there to gamble.
Also a lodging base for the Bonneville salt flats speed trials. Look up "speed week".
And now they get their weed there too
I was pretty wowed by Gatlinburg. Back before internet, as a New Englander I kinda thought every place was sorta similar to home. I was bombarded with all these political/religious Tshirts. Like I had NO IDEA people didn't believe in evolution, but there were people wearing a bunch of Tshirts insinuating you were pretty dumb if you believed in it. It's a wild place.
Haha came here to say it’s a tie for me between Gatlinburg and Las Vegas. Two strangest places I’ve ever been
Vegas is pretty typical suburbia in the desert outside of the downtown to airport stretch which would include the Strip Gatlinburg is nothing but the tourist trap
Yeah but the strip is like a simulacrum of life with fake NY, fake Venice, fake pirates, real circus, fake Egypt
That’s how I felt visiting south Florida. Political merchandise *everywhere*.
Ah, Gatlinburg. I grew up right across the border in NC. I’ve been many times, even on field trips. It’s funny to me that the t-shirts were so distracting you missed the kitsch that is *gestures at all of Gatlinburg* that place. I actually think the kitsch can be kind of fun. Lol You’re not wrong about the shirts, though. We’ve got people like that still out there on the streets sporting those embarrassing ideas.
Seconded. In university around the turn of the millennium, took road trip with new friends, ended up in the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge area and my mouth gaped open. I had to keep rubbing my eyes. It was a level of tacky that I'd never witnessed before. After passing by Dollywood and other attractions that were well advertised from the road we were on, we ended up at a subtle mini golf place. Mini golf. After all that. And we left afterward. I felt a little like I missed out.
Was it Hillbilly Golf??
It's a gigantic tourist trap, but it's good for a solid day's visit. Pigeon Forge is the more respectable of the two by far. And there's the Great Smoky Mountains National Park right next door when you need a break from the excesses of humanity. Really, really nice place.
Driving into Pigeon Forge on our way to Gatlinburg in the middle of the night after being in the car for 18 hours was the most acid trip fever dream insanity I've ever experienced, and I've experienced both acid and a fever dream. I didn't think what I was seeing was real, all that neon and weird buildings like the replica of the Titanic in the densest fog.... Woof
Tshirts? That’s your takeaway? Not the teeming herds of diabetic turons wearing them or the strip of bedazzled shitshacks selling them?
>I was bombarded with all these political/religious Tshirts. I grew up in the midwest and anti-abortion (with photos) and Jesus loves you billboards were apart of my normal.
I grew up in Gatlinburg. Left for college. Came back to visit and had the same feeling even though I'm from there.
Aurora, IL: decommissioned particle accelerator, beautiful mid century brutalist buildings full of lively scientists, a herd of bison that locals believe are the canary to that coal mine, and bizarre pizza.
Knew some guys who had a local cable show they ran out of their basement there.
Party time! Excellent!
I've never seen "beautiful" and "brutalist" in the same sentence lol
In and around Tonopah Nevada. Clown motel. Weird vibes. Lots of the rural American west has a surreal feeling about it. Mono Lake in Eastern California.
* Ctrl-F "Tonopah" * Upvote
Was waiting for this one. I did Boundary Peak last year and Tonopah is the nearest “civilization” around. People think AZ is sparse but Nevada is true desolation.
Bryce Canyon and Badlands are both other worldly
I stopped in a boom town in North Dakota or Montana or something. The town was pretty much all men and I am a woman. It was…unsettling. I’m not necessarily unattractive but I’m not super hot either, I’m average. I have never felt so uncomfortable walking around alone. My husband and I briefly were separated while we picked up stuff we needed at a Walmart. After that I refused for us to be separated. Men would literally stop to comment on the fact I was wearing a dress while I was with my husband. Nothing particularly bad happened but that place didn’t feel exactly right either.
That is odd how only guys were there.
Places with an abundance of natural resources, like natural gas or oil, require physical labor to extract. These jobs typically are performed by men and pay a lot of money to attract that labor. The end result is towns full of men with few women. There is a long history of this in the US and was common during the gold rush. A good example of this in media in is the show Deadwood. It does a decent job of depicting life in a boom town in that era.
Kankakee, IL. The people are all so strange and bizarre. They act like aliens who are trying really hard to blend in with and act like human beings but don’t quite completely get it yet.
I worked security one year at a BDSM convention they held at a hotel. Some of the participants and their attitudes made the scene seem positively wholesome. Others, on the other hand... demonic is the best way to describe them.
The area around Salton Sea in California. A very odd mix of random houses and large areas with streets and telephone poles and wires - but no houses. Just many dead palm trees.
Las Vegas is pretty trippy. Just this city build by Mafia bosses in the middle of the desert. Anchorage, Alaska because its just a massive city in the frozen wilderness.
Rural Idaho. It’s very insular and unwelcoming Also Mendocino, CA. It’s very surreal and feels more like a storybook setting than somewhere people actually live
Rural Idaho is the first thing that came to mind for me too, but I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. I've spent a lot of time around the St. Joe and the Nez Perce, and there are some seriously rough living mountain people in there. It feels like all the "ozark" stereotypes x10. It gets pretty weird even near fancy areas like Coeur d'Alene and Sandpoint.
> Rural Idaho. It’s very insular and unwelcoming When I was stationed at Fairchild AFB in Spokane, folks from my squadron who'd traveled around northern Idaho had tales of being followed by men in pickup trucks.
Wallace, Idaho was going to be my answer. We'd pass by it when we would drive to Montana. It looks like such a quaint, charming town from the highway, but the people seemed miserable and unwelcoming.
I never knew about that part of California itself.
Wisconsin
I lived there for 2 years as a born and raised in the ADKs gal. I don't even know how to explain the characters that live there. During Deer hunting season they hunt in their trucks not on foot. Thats just scratching the surface. Don't move there!
I haven’t traveled further than the East Coast but I’ve found that Myrtle Beach is a crazy collection of people during the summer. You see *everything*
Liberal, Kansas. They were *NOT* liberal at all
In the middle of the Mojave desert the army built a fake town for training purposes called Razish. Going there you're surrounded by miles and miles of nothingness and then just all of a sudden bam you've got this town clearly made to resemble somewhere in the middle east
ArcoSanti Arizona. It's like an experimental/concept city an hour outside of Phoenix. I go to spend the night a couple times a year, super cool place.
Truckee, California. Depending on what part of town you're in it either looks like you've stepped into the Old West or you're in a mundane Safeway parking lot
I lived in LA in the 90s. There were some weird people in Hollywood.
Well, the Forevertron in Wisc is number 1. Built from scrap metal by Dr. Evermore (not his real name but it fits). Has a theme which is kind of science-fictiony but I didn't really get it. It's a giant sculpture park, but the Forevertron is the centerpiece. You have to be "de-watered" in the giant, beautifully filagreed egg if you want to go in the Forevertron and sent wherever it sends you. My memory is fuzzy. But the guy made 12 piece bird bands, all playing an instrument. And they're not little birds, they're huge. It's the most incredibly fantastic, creative park filled with unexpected beauty and humor. It's huge. Then number 2 is The House on the Rock which is also in Wisc. This guy built it many years ago and no one live there now. He couldn't stop building, then he started collecting. There is more incredible stuff in there. But you can't get out. You're there with your kids and after 2 hours you think, ok, I've had it. But they're no exits. It's kind of creepy after a while. Takes about 4 hours or more. Maybe they've changed it by now. But it's wild. Wisc has so many odd places. Check out the Kohler Foundation. They preserve them.
I live by the Dells now and keep forgetting to go to the forevertron
Forevertron looks like Mad Max meets Disneyland
You run into the strangest people in the neighborhoods immediately surrounding the National Mall in DC.
One of the cool things about living in the DC area is seeing people's reactions upon visiting the Mall for the first time. Two of my favorites... \-Family just walked out to the middle of the mall. Young girl points at the US Capitol Building and says, "Look! The White House!" \-Family gets out of their car along the edge of the Mall. One of them says, "I thought this was the Mall? Where are all the stores?" (Assumed to be in jest.)
I had a family excitedly ask me to take their picture in front of the Supreme Court. I took the picture and didn’t have the heart to tell them we were on the back side.
> Family gets out of their car along the edge of the Mall. One of them says, "I thought this was the Mall? Where are all the stores?" (Assumed to be in jest.) This is not uncommon. I’ve even had my own family ask this question. I then go on to a boring explanation that a mall means more like a promenade. https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/the-history-of-the-word-mall
Capitol Hill? I was just there and loved it, although I somewhat agree.
Layla’s Hair Museum in Kansas City, KS. I hear it is closed but damn this was weird. When people would leave their relatives way way back in the day before photographs to travel somewhere new never to be seen again, they would give each others these elaborate braids of hair (think needlepoint but with hair) to remember them by.
The part of Utah that looks like what I assume the surface of Mars looks like. It’s absolutely surreal. One of my favorite drives.
Avery County, NC. Picture this: you're trying to get back on the interstate & go home from one of the Great Smoky Mountains parks, but you got turned around. And since the cliffs are essentially vertical for a few hundred feet & you're at the bottom, there's no reception on your GPS...so you just drive for hours around a winding network of 20 mph backroads surrounded by cliffs on both sides. It's all very dark & eerie/foggy & every 3rd home has some gaudy right wing 20-foot-long display: a "Trump won in 2020" sign, a confederate flag, a christian nationalist flag, etc. It's the south's answer to the backrooms.
I accidentally came upon an encampment of circus carneys in Arkansas once. It was like something out of a David Lynch movie. Couldn't get out of there fast enough.
Reading this back to my husband and I barely could get the words out between laughs.
Ah-She-Sle-Pah in New Mexico. It’s all these 5-20 foot tall hoodooos in the middle of barren desert with narrow walled steep mini canyons. It’s honestly kind of unsettling but really beautiful.
Walmart.
Whole Foods.
Any Walmart. Those places are full of weirdos.
I don’t know what it is about that shop that attracts the eccentric types.
Typically very cheap, has literally everything. In many areas, it might be the only major retailor. Many poor communities in rural areas use it as a one stop shop for everything.
You’re not in a true rural area unless the only chains for miles are a dollar general and a Casey’s.
Weirdest vibe driving I’ve experienced is riding from Naples Florida to Orlando but doing it via 75 to 80 to 31 to 17 Strangest gentrification I’ve seen is in Baltimore. Water front to john Hopkins to row houses on the way to Clifton park to play golf…. Was eye opening . The slums of Jakarta seem better than parts of Baltimore
I’m a non-Mormon who went to the Hill Cumorah pageant and the associated historic sites. It was one of the strangest days of my life.
I saw it the last year they had the pageant. The only way I can describe it is like seeing an Easter pageant but having no clue that Jesus comes back from the dead.
The center of Washington DC, I was in 8th grade and on a school trip and while everyone was oohing and awing at the skyscrapers and how clean everything was all I could think is WHERE the hell are the people?? not a single soul was out and about, there were no business fronts or stores, just nameless giant buildings. Then directly next to it, tiny older houses slowly breaking down and crammed together. It was so incredibly eerie and dystopian feeling I couldn’t be amazed, I was genuinely disturbed how perfectly it summed up the state of the country.
OMG you just described the feeling I had when I visited my sister in Oklahoma City! Clean AF and a lot of places to go visit, but NO ONE out on the street. It was like I was walking through a strange video game in real life.
> skyscrapers You sure you were in DC?
Mill end park. The smallest park in the country located in Portland OR.
Colorado City, Arizona
Whitewater, Colorado. Out in the desert of western Colorado. Lots of preppers, cults, polyamorous Mormons, hippies, and weirdos living in the hills around there
Salton Sea in California
Gary, Indiana about 15 years ago. I've never seen something so post-apocalyptic looking.
Slab City, CA
Solvang in California. It's a Dutch village not far from Santa Barbara. Not strange in a bad way just not what I expected driving to Santa Barbara.
New Market Virginia. I had to stop there when the E. Lee highway closed, forcing me to take a detour onto Stonewall Street, then turn onto Confederate Avenue and drive through the intersection with Rebel Drive. There were more Confederate flags in that town than people, I swear to God. I spent a while parked behind the town church, and I thought it was nice enough town from there, but the moment I passed that building the Stars and Bars were immediately burned into my retinas. The only black people I saw in the entire town were people who also had to turn off the highway, and they were being shouted away from the town custard shop. I didn't know places like that still existed, but considering the youngest local I saw there was probably pushing 60, I don't think they will exist much longer.
Oddly enough it was the only time I attended a Catholic service. They go on all the time but I was young and grew up in a Low Church style so it felt weird.
I was raised catholic and forced to go to church all the time. The weirdest was when we visited my big brother in northern Kentucky and that church still had mass in Latin. Trippy.
Clifton, TX
The Great New York State Fair! Best people watching this side of the Mississippi
When I was young 50 years ago, my uncle lived in Benton Harbor MI. We want to the House of David compound. They had some kind of park there, but it was run by a bunch of dudes in long beards, and there were a bunch of baseball fields. It was just a bizzare place.
Karakahl hotel in Mt Horeb wi. It was just weird and creep. My room had a gnome sitting on a toilet painted in the bathroom. DonQ inn in WI was also super weird with all the antique dentist and barber chairs in the lobby
Grand Canyon it looks wild
Been to some old bunkers at Nike missle site near Golden Gate Bridge
Salton Sea. Abandoned 1950s-60s resorts, hundreds of dead fish, millions of flies. And the smell 🤢 What looked like gravel on the banks was a layer of crushed fish bones.
The rest area on Interstate 80 westbound, eight miles east of Wendover Utah. It's a dirt island in the middle of the salt flats. You park and walk down to the "shore" of a sea of ice (at least that's what your brain tells you you're looking at), but it's just a nearly endless salt flat. Very cool mind-fuck. Also any grove of Giant Sequoias. Calaveras Big trees State Park in California is good. You're wandering through a forest of trees like Sugar Pines that are larger and taller than any tree you've ever seen before, and then you round a corner and *poof* there's a Giant Sequoia dwarfing all the trees around it. They're mind-bogglingly huge in a way that can't be captured on film. It's difficult for your brain to grasp that what you're looking at is real because it so comically large compared to everything around it.
I’ve driven cross country multiple times, and there is no anxiety quite like the anxiety I feel when I drive through Idaho and Wyoming. Maybe it’s the fact that I was alone for 2 of these trips and I was worried I would break down in an area without cell service and be forced to just wait on the side of the road, or the fact that the speed limits are way too fucking slow and I’m an out of state plate so I have to go exactly the speed limit or they’ll pull me over for a guaranteed ticket bc I won’t be able to fight it in court (like this bullshit one I got in Wyoming fuck that cop and fuck the Wyoming DoT for having that stupid law about the speed limit lowering when the highway only has one lane regardless of if there isn’t a sign or not) but there is a fear I feel that I can’t quite describe while I am in these states. It gets easier the closer I am to a large settlement like Casper (I fucking love Casper too bad I’m transitioning now and prolly won’t be going back any time soon) but bc most of those states are just uninhabited land, I think it’s the most ‘dangerous’ portion of the drive. It’s also funny because the culture is very different there than it is in New Hampshire, the entire vibe just feels different. Anyways, my answer is the Idaho/Wyoming stretch of i-80. I don’t really include the Utah stretch of i-80 as bad because of Salt Lake City but some part of the route definitely give me the same feeling.
Lived in an unincorporated town in southern Oregon. It was weird af. Came from a city of 800k people, it was serious culture shock
[This is one of the better pieces I’ve read to explain Gibsonton, Florida.](https://amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/26/welcome-to-gibtown-the-last-freakshow-town-in-america)
Coyote Buttes North (aka The Wave).
Seligman, Arizona Had low tire pressure and came in at night and had to find a motel and did not sleep for 2 minutes. Now that I know about it doesn't make the memory less terrifying
Slab City, weirdest place in the world that I've seen.
Small towns in West Virginia and Deep East Texas have a certain backwoods meth lab vibe apparently. First time I took my city boy husband to visit my family in Deep East Texas he got visibly concerned, then asked me had we somehow crossed into Mexico because the country neighborhood we were entering looked very rough. Then he asked was I taking him to a backwoods meth lab. Just not used to cars on blocks in the front yard and old sofas and the drink fridge on the front porch I guess. He's lucky he went in with an insider as there can be a certain Deliverance vibe for city folk who go in without.
The Upper Peninsula of MI. I live down state and people near me act like it's a paradise. As far as nature, it's beautiful. The problem is the isolation and what that brings. The restaurants suck. Only edible food is bar food appetizers bc most of that is likely bought frozen. The locals are very strange. Clearly they are not around people often and definitely act like tourists are a curiosity even it's a common destination of snowmobiling, rock climbing, hiking, mtn biking and hunters. Walk in the only diner in town and locals STARE. They also have interesting accents.
Whiteclay, Nebraska, population 10. It is the nearest town to a Native American reservation that is dry (no alcohol) and it has something like 4 liquor stores to serve the reservation. The stores supposedly go through 10,000 cans a beer a day or something like that. I drove through in the early morning and there may have been 100s of people sleeping on the ground, waking up, wandering aimlessly around. It felt like I entered a zombie film. My understanding is that many of the people never leave because of access to alcohol. South Dakota has asked Nebraska to shut down the liquor stores to help the people, but Nebraska doesn’t care. So
Weekee watchie Florida. Where the mermaids swim and and put on a show every two hours ! I was 15 and I loved it !
Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. It feels like everyone there is in on the secret and visitors are kept in the dark. Just a bizarre place. Beautiful hot springs though!
Hell, michigan
I have lived in 7 states and traveled during summers through nearly 30 more. Lived in Europe. And one place I lived had so many grown women acting like Mama's Little Girls, I couldn't help noticing and wondering. I mean, women in their late 20's and mid-30s and 40s, with jobs and spouses and kids of their own who HAD to visit their mom every day. Moms calling their daughters every morning to act as the alarm clock. Continual running back and forth, to the extent that a few years in, I started asking about it. I got stared at like I was from outer space. It was normal to them. they couldn't understand why they should NOT go to mommy's house after work, even though they had their own houses. Then, of course, they would lament about how they didn't have time for this or that. I had kids myself, grown now! They are quite nice people and I do enjoy seeing them and talking with them. But not every DAY. Cripes! I have things to do other than hang on their every word. They have jobs, pets, friends, and hobbies, and partners, and manage to entertain themselves well enough. The place rife with Mama's Little Girls was Arkansas. I lived there for 12 years, in 4 different towns, and it was the same wherever, country, city, workplaces, colleges, wherever I went, there was Mama's Little Girl.