Big Things In America

I took a road trip, because I needed a road trip. To give it some shape, and to give myself lots of opportunities to get lost on windy dirt roads in the middle of nowhere, I decided that I would try to find as many big things as possible. Not “big” in the “-gest ball of twine” sense, necessarily — I’ve nothing against cheesy roadside attractions of that sort, but I was more looking for the “awe and wonder” version.

I got many good suggestions from friends and family, and from people at metafilter. The Center for Land Use Interpretation’s database, though sadly out of date in many cases, was also very useful. I didn’t get to nearly as many of them as I’d hoped to, whether for time or distance or just having seen some of them before, so this isn’t even vaguely an attempt to be the canonical list of all big things. Just a collection of a few of them.

Also, you can read about the place I almost died stupidly. So that’ll be fun.

And that’s that.
August 3, 2006
Home again, and what that means