Roadside America: A Useful Guide to the Unusual

Before the Mayberry Day-by-Day Flip Book Calendar, I used to joke that I was a published author and photographer due to a paragraph I wrote and a few photos I took being used in the great website and even better app, Roadside America. 

I have always been a fan of unusual “roadside attractions.” If time allows, I am not averse to driving out of my way a reasonable amount to see one. I have especially fond memories of my old college roommate, Dick, and I driving down to visit our good friend, Jim, in Lexington. The three of us had attended Mayberry Days together the first time I ever attended in 2006.  On a whim, the three of us drove from Jim’s all the way to the excellent Moonlite Bar-B-Q in Owensboro, Kentucky, nearly a three-hour trip each way! It took much longer than that, though, due to us detouring multiple times to see roadside attractions.

One of the few apps of my phone that I have paid for—and it was worth every penny—is the Roadside America app. They also maintain a useful website but it is not as extensive as and can’t compare to the app when traveling.

Roadside America invites users to submit tips for attractions not already on the website and app. My friend Barry, the co-founder of The Gomer and Goober Pyle Comic Book Literary Guild, had submitted a tip and called my attention to it or I am not sure if I would have even realized it.

In 2014, I submitted a tip through the app that was eventually published, along with some photos of a unique sculpture outside of a wonderful diner near Cincinnati called Sugar and Spice that is open for breakfast and lunch only.

One of the restaurant’s specialties are thin, wispy pancakes. The sculpture is a pig balancing a plateful of pancakes while sitting on a larger stack. Smaller pigs bearing breakfast items circle the base of pancakes. Cincinnati has a long history tied to pork and many years ago was sometimes nicknamed “Porkopolis.” The city used to avoid the name but now embraces it, even running the Flying Pig Marathon every year.

Only one photo I submitted is used on the Roadside Attractions website which is more limited than the app. The phone app includes two photos I took, as well as others of the sculpture later submitted by other users.

On the afore-mentioned trip with my college friends, I used the app to locate a Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial in Kentucky’s state capital, Frankfort. The tip had been written by the Roadside America editors themselves instead of a user. I was surprised there were no photos of the memorial which is a giant sundial, so I submitted photos of that as well which were eventually used.

The app is so extensive, it is unusual to find an attraction not on the app or on the app without photos. Still, I am glad that my being published now includes the Mayberry Day-by-Day Calendar and a soon-to-be-released traditional book about The Andy Griffith Show and not just my single paragraph tip!