Virginia’s ‘Tick Town’ is not the first place I’ve visited that smells like blood. There was that field of flesh lilies with flaky white butterflies. The was Nebraska, I think. There was the waterfall in Connecticut that was legally required to allow public access to prove that the liquid cascading over the high cliffs above was not blood, despite it looking like blood and smelling like blood and producing a fine pink mist that tasted like blood. I read, recently, that they had to shut that waterfall down.

It was blood after all.

‘There is little doubt that humanity has wreaked havoc on the planet and there are a number of good people- of good scientists- doing hard work to recognize and mitigate that damage. Within that population, however, there are a few that take what is clear and run with it to unclear conclusions. This is likely true of the creators of ‘Tick Town,’ a couple of disgraced biologists that claim, generally, that man has stolen its blood from the ticks.’

They make you wear a tick-proof suit in ‘Tick Town’ despite several signs that indicate the ticks should be harmless, given how much blood exists “in its natural state.” The natural state of blood, according to ‘Tick Town,’ is in rivers and rain. Flowers are dewy with blood in tick town and blood pools in the cracked sidewalk like a cracked callus. There is so much blood that the ticks drown in it. They swell up like balloons and float around like contented tourists but even I can see they’re dead.

It’s hard to feel sorry for them, though. Even in such a miserable state.

I’ve chosen to avoid the peak hours of ‘Tick Town,’ when the owners arrive to give themselves over to the starving ticks, describing all the ways a visitor might accidentally let a few into the suits to join them, though also explaining that they are legally obliged to warn visitors against doing anything like that. They explain how easy and painless it is to be bitten by a tick- how little blood a tick actually consumes compared to the volume we carry around each day. It is a simple way to give back to nature, they tell you, and if that’s what they have to do to feel better about the world, then I’m happy to keep my judgement to myself.

Hector stays in the trailer for this one, as bloated and dependent as the ticks. As much a means to cope with the world, too. He would be happier in a home, I’m sure, with other tragic animals. But I need him and, as long as that’s true, he needs me too.

But people do what they have to, just to get by. It’s as true on the Wayside as it is anywhere.

-traveler

‘It’s well known that Mallard County School Districts teach ‘tip of the pyramid’ rather than ‘tip of the iceberg’ as a common idiom for describing an inconsistency between the understood aspects of a situation, and the larger, concealed truth. It follows that this colloquial variation stems from ‘The Rising Pyramid’ located within Mallard County’s borders. Lesser known, perhaps, is that the Mallard County usage is distinctly negative. This is because the slow migration of ‘The Rising Pyramid’ has only ever wrought devastation.

The colonial history of ‘The Rising Pyramid’ begins with its discovery in 1912, when a small cohort of ambitious gold miners thought they might have discovered one of a number of rumored lost cities attributed to the continent. ‘The Pyramid’ was excavated to about four feet before a sinkhole opened and swallowed all but one of the five men. The survivor was found raving in the woods and near death, though not so near that he wasn’t able to pass the whole sorry story to a group of traveling soldiers before succumbing to a mysterious fever.

A much larger contingent soon arrived at the site of ‘The Pyramid,’ finding that the structure had risen to fill the sinkhole and had subsequently revealed a number of dire-seeming illustrations carved by well-meaning ancients into its surface. A particularly clear-minded Captain, named Mallard, reasoned that the site was bad news and rallied the men to re-bury it.

Three months later, reports of ‘The Pyramid’s’ reemergence reached Captain Mallard and he arranged for a second visit. What he found and confirmed over the next several years, was that ‘The Pyramid’ was rising and that no earthly force could stop it. Fort Mallard was constructed, in part, to study and guard ‘The Rising Pyramid.’

It released plague rats at the height of 15.’

It burned red-hot at 20.’

It tore a man in two at 21’ when he attempted to scale it in the night. The exact mechanism of this attack remains unknown (but was repeated at the height of 124’ under similar circumstances in 1998).

By the time Fort Mallard became a town ‘The Rising Pyramid’ had become a familiar threat, not unlike the Yellowstone calderas or Joshua Tree’s laughing ditch. Stress is high in the town and they do not welcome gawkers, though gawkers inevitably arrive.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘People talk a lot about ‘The Wet Heat’ in Cougar Valley, Washington, where geography, climate change, and the peculiarities of jet streams combine to make an oasis of sorts. The temperature in Cougar Valley hangs around 95 Fahrenheit for most of the year, dropping to a chilly 90 in the dead of winter. Humidity rarely drops into the eighties, making the valley something of a natural sauna. Some people travel there for its many spa resorts. Others live there.

‘Cougar Valley Rot’ is a condition unique to the area, one in which the skin becomes spongy and sloughs off like a molting snake. Its painless, apparently, but also quite deadly if left long enough. Treatment can only be performed in dry air, which tends to burn the raw flesh of victims. And pain is a powerful motivator. Some choose to succumb to the rot rather than face the dry world outside. Among residents of the valley, life expectancy sits around 60. Perhaps this is why the town’s motto, inscribed on its welcome signs, is surprisingly self-aware:

‘Pretty good, as a stopover.’’

“The wet heat gets into just about everything,” the man explains, gesturing apologetically to an old single-room camper attached to an even older car. I nod and he continues. “Fabric’s been stripped out wholesale. Most of the cushions, too. Cabinets are warped, a bit. Some don’t like to close. Others don’t like to open. Maybe once you drive it out of here the wood’ll sort itself out.”

“Wishful thinking,” I smile. I’m no great bargainer, but I know when I’m being sold optimism.

“True.” The man scratches his arm and draws four white gouges in his skin. The rot, I suppose. I noticed it in his face, as well. “But anything that’s rusted’s been replaced, I guarantee that much. The bones are good. Price is good too.”

The price is exceptionally good. “Why do all the work stripping and shining on the thing if you planned on selling it so cheap?”

“Meant to travel the country in her,” he says, “Seems unlikely, now. Least this way, she’ll see some road.”

I nod. “She’ll see some road.”

The man takes the bike for half the asking price. The rest I pay in cash. I hope he’ll put some of the money toward treatment. I hope he won’t ride the bike with the rot. Mostly, I put his concerns behind me and get out of ‘The Wet Heat’ before my clothes mildew. I know a woman in Oregon that can check the car and make the camper livable.

I’m tired of sleeping on the ground.

-traveler

Hector thrives in the dark. Maybe it’s a rabbit thing. Maybe it’s a once-blind, now-sighted thing. Maybe it’s just Hector who, thankfully, doesn’t seem to mind the amount of time he spends in his kennel as we travel and who is more than willing to accompany me into ‘The Mine Mine,’ which is both dark and, in places, tight. It’s the people he’s skittish around and I’ve learned, myself, that this is a wise instinct. I avoid the light of other headlamps, keeping mine dark until the very last moment. Then, we begin to dig.

‘Part museum, part burial-mound, ‘The Mine Mine’ is the eclectic collection of an eccentric dead man. In the style of old pharaohs, he chose to be buried with his belongings and made good work of it himself, casting everything he grew tired of into a natural pit on his land. The pit is one of two entrances to a complicated cave system where these discarded possessions spread out over the years but were otherwise preserved. The second entrance was found long after the man had died and had been ceremoniously sealed in the pit. By then, much of the land was public and a ticketing system was established. This tenuous nicety is the only thing keeping the activities at ‘The Mine, Mine’ in the arena of ‘discovery’ rather than, say, ‘looting.’’

There are precious few rules at play in ‘The Mine Mine.’ A lot more in the way of personal liabilities. A blinking key chain on my belt loop should, theoretically, indicate my location in the caverns and send an alert if I’m down here too long. That way they can charge me for the overstay and, if I’m lucky, recognize if I’ve fallen into a pit or otherwise mangled myself past the point of self-evacuation.

The route I take isn’t very long, but it’s off-map and a little more treacherous than what the average family caravan is willing to risk for old canned food and cave-softened memorabilia from the man’s past. A narrow crevasse opens along the floor. I jump it, rather than trust the rickety bridge someone installed nearby. I’ve read that early Mine-miners set traps. This was before everyone realized that it was all mostly junk, down here.

Hector and I squeeze through a crack in the wall, one that I might not have been able to make even a year ago. I’ve been losing weight- enough that people sometimes comment on it in a less-than-complimentary way. In this instance, it means I make it into a chamber that is inaccessible, or at least, not worth the risk, to others. There is a skeleton on the floor, which is concerning, but not surprising. The sign outside said I might see things like that. I double check that it’s a Halloween decoration but I’m not medically knowledgeable and some combination of squeamishness and superstition keep me from turning it over.

I squeeze into the next chamber and feel my feet go out from under me. I tumble into a pit full of old toy boxes before I slide down into a new cavern some thirty feet down. There’s some panic. Some grappling for my light before realizing its still attached to my head, blocked by the paper stat-card for an old transformer. Hector slides down after me and starts to chew the garbage we brought down with us. I try to find my bearings and, instead, I find the body of the man in his tacky, bejeweled casket. Several of those jewels have been pried away by a crowbar hidden near the north wall.

This is not my first time in the chamber. Not my second. Every few years I have to lose the weight and shuffle around in the dark, waiting to fall through those boxes because I can never quite remember where the pit is and marking it would make the treasure that much more obvious.

I take six more jewels- enough for the next couple years if I’m careful. I don’t trust myself to take them all at once. With that much money, I could do anything.

But wouldn’t.

-traveler

‘Twisted and fused, as though by some horrible heat, the bones in Wyoming’s ‘Werewolf Fossil Beds’ are probably anything but lycanthropic. Perhaps a group of ancient men were out walking dogs when a volcano erupted. Perhaps a freak acidic geyser ended a pursuit of villagers by wolves. Perhaps the remains are an example of surreal art from some bygone age.

These are examples taken directly from signage posted at the site, which tends to champion any theory but the werewolf one. In doing so, the site has inadvertently unified werewolf-believers in their assumptions about the bones. The gift shop sells no wolf gear, a need that local entrepreneurs are more than happy to fill. Every gas station in a 50-mile radius of ‘Werewolf Fossil Beds’ sells monster plushies, and every diner serves werewolf steaks.’

A man is becoming a werewolf at the fossil beds when I arrive. It’s a fairly torturous process. And long. He stops to grunt out that he’s “about halfway there” when Hector sniffs his face. He suggests, between breaths, that when the transformation is complete, neither Hector nor I should be in the vicinity.

“I don’t know what I’ll be capable of,” he explains.

If the man weren’t coherent enough to explain, I would have assumed that the transformation was a seizure, maybe. A very pinched nerve. He’s grown no excess hair. His fingernails, hardly claws, are bitten down to the skin. In his favor, his shirt is torn in the style of Hollywood werewolf transformations and some of the sounds he’s making are borderline animalistic.

The trouble is that the man’s transformation is taking place right in front of the only informational sign available at ‘Werewolf Fossil Beds.’ It’s awkward to lean over him. Awkward physically, for me, because I’m either top-heavy with a rabbit in my hands or struggling to keep Hector away from the were-man with one foot. It’s awkward for the transforming man too, I can tell. He’s polite enough not to say anything, but his anguished spasms are less involved when I’m too close, like he’s afraid he’ll hit me as the muscles of his shoulders jerk and roll. He whimpers a few times, some primal were-cub entering the subconscious, I assume. Finally, I come to a solution.

“Could I just, uh, drag you a few feet to the left.”

“It might be dangerous,” he warns, but by then I’ve already got him by the pant legs and all his symptoms seem to move above the waist.

He wriggles and claws at the floor. He nips half-heartedly at my shoes. After a few seconds I’ve got him far enough away that we can both go about our business peaceably.

I leave before the transformation is complete.

People do strange things we they believe as hard as that man does.

-traveler

‘The Wayside is, at times, more a matter of perspective than a true, physical place. A prime example is ‘The International Travel Experience,’ which was too popular to qualify for a Wayside designation in its heyday, the 1950s, and remained a little too popular well into the new millennium- a case of nostalgia blinding its audience to certain red flags. ‘The International Travel Experience’ was something of a museum on wheels, allowing the working-class family to ‘tour the world in ten minutes or less’ by presenting room-sized mock-ups of famous destinations and sprinkling them with crude, robotic caricatures to serve as guides.

Now defunct, ‘The International Travel Experience’ rots like a corpse off the interstate, drawing gross sympathy from apologists and rightful scorn from those travelers who strive for a kinder roadside. Violence can be expected, here. The soul of the thing is not yet extinguished.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘While this author doesn’t disagree with the sentiment in its common context, a traveler is right to be suspicious of any business that takes seriously the adage: ‘It’s about the journey, not the destination.’ In this, the free market, the product must take center stage, or it will be met with suspicion.

Though, there is a loophole.

Sometimes a product can be so bad- a service so grueling- that those who engage with it feel bonded in misery. The camaraderie, the story, becomes the anti-product and the original purchase is relegated to a position of practical necessity, like an egg carton to eggs. That’s why this is a loophole rather than an exception, and it’s why a business like ‘Mazcar’s Magical Mashed Potato Sandwiches,’ which sports ‘The World’s Longest Drive-Thru,’ carries on in even the most hostile economic situations.

Misery begets misery, and the misery that ‘Mazcar’s’ serves up is, at least, the sort we choose to inflict upon ourselves.’

‘Mazcar’s’ is built into an otherwise unoccupied parking garage which was constructed for an exciting new outlet mall and made obsolete by the mall’s failure to materialize. Originally occupying just three rooms, ‘Mazcar’s’ sandwiches were featured in a viral video post and became a ‘whole thing’ overnight.

This, I learn from the woman behind me in line.

Truth be told, I’ve been cutting some corners in my research, favoring the practical for the fanciful. For instance, I know that the average time spent in ‘Mazcar’s Drive-Thru’ is around 10 hours, which is down from 13 when I first passed it a few years ago and represents an all-time low since the precipitating incident (what I now know was a video).

Considering the long wait time, I’ve packed a great deal of food and water for Hector and I and worked out a bathrooming solution for the both of us: a small litter box for him and an uncomfortable in-pants urinal thing for me. I’ve read the few rules that ‘Mazcar’s’ has posted regarding drive-thru etiquette and studied the strategies of those who have come before me. Most agree that the longest one can be out of line before losing their place is not so much a matter of time but of distance, that is, the distance between the front of one’s own vehicle and the back of the vehicle ahead. More than one vehicle length is dangerous. More than about 175% of one’s vehicle length is an endgame most of the time. Everyone seems to agree that the line won’t put up with a two-vehicle gap and there is a lot of frustration in a line so long. It snaps with a great deal of force.

The only other thing I learned about ‘Mazcar’s’ is that I should prepare to be disappointed. The drive-thru spirals up the center of the garage and then back down around the outside, weaving in and out of itself. Microphone sign-boards check and re-check customer orders, sometimes offering false assurances that food is being fast-tracked, other times seeming to flub details in order to test customers of their own preferences. It’s complicated and almost beautiful but the sandwiches are said to be pretty awful. Food should taste good or be easy to eat or healthy, at least, but ‘Mazcar’s’ are none of the above. Reviews say they’ve only gotten worse and a profit data suggests this may be by design. The worse the sandwiches get, the cleaner the catharsis.

I verify with a speaker to my left that my order is still #338 and that I wanted just ‘Mazcar’s Orginal:’ two mashed potato patties in a sort of grilled cheese formation. It’s the cheapest offering and the hardest to screw-up. The woman behind me tries to strike up a conversation but I pretend not to hear her. Someone honks in the distance.

It’s been three hours, now. By midnight I should have my sandwich and then Hector and I will have to risk camping on the outskirts of the garage or driving to the nearest motel, some thirty miles north. Seems like a waste to spend the money on a room I’ll only use for half a night, but then, I’ve gotten sort of used to sleeping on the ground.

-traveler

‘The origin of ‘The Essentialized Americatown’ in the Americatown district of San Francisco (and the subsequent Americatowns within those Americatowns) is commonly misunderstood as a bit of an inside joke. In actuality, ‘The EA’ was formed of such serious intentions that it passes as satire for most of the people that come to understand what it is: an unabashed display of patriotism taken to the extreme.

The first level of Americatown is, what might be termed, the ‘Las Vegas’ version of the country. Most of the nation’s monuments exist in miniature within its bounds and lawlessness is kept to the sort of guilty fun one expects in a shady casino. Americatown II (and here we’ve chosen to assign numbers though the many sub-Americatowns recognize no such tiering) is much more serious, where lawlessness is taken to a near-fascist place, where citizens are expected to obey the rules police and politicians flout. Those same police and politicians turn a blind eye on the antics of Americatown III, which is undergoing a perpetual civil war, the basis of which is both sides claiming ownership of Americatown III, which professes no allegiance whatsoever.

This goes on and on- there are other books that detail the various Americatowns in all there eccentricities. What’s important to this tome is the story of what exists at the very core Americatown (and, here, we are unsure which number to assign). It’s rumored that, in the very center of all Americatowns, there exists a loaded gun that is constitutionally above the law. Six shots with no legal consequence- that is the core of Americatown, America.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

‘The statue once called ‘The Melty Miser’ of west Alabama didn’t start out melty. In fact, it didn’t even start out a miser. ‘The Melty Miser’ was born into this world as ‘Happy Harold,’ the manic-looking mascot of a local hardware chain. The statue was erected in the style of Texas’ cement cowboys, made to loom over an empty stretch of highway and alert travelers that various power tools were available at unbeatable prices just off the next exit.

What set ‘Harold’ apart initially was his size. It’s said his signature cowlick brought him to nearly 80’ at the outset. The great irony of ‘Happy Harold’ is, of course, that his height was achieved with the use of subpar materials- seemingly some sort of thick, experimental plastic. It was only a few weeks before his features began to droop under the hot, Alabama sun.

Thus, the ‘melty.’

By the next year, ‘Happy Harold’s’ smile had inverted and his brow had taken on the unbridled cruelty of a fairy tale villain. The money bag he once held high (to indicate a celebration of what he had saved on hardware), slowly dropped behind his back, the arm twisting unnaturally, until it settled into a position that looked distinctly like he was attempting to keep the money away from roadside viewers.

Thus, the ‘miser.’

This is all ancient history, of course, because ‘The Melty Miser’ collapsed during a heatwave in 2021, his body sprawled backward in the field off the highway. Was anyone hurt? Well, that’s a good question- and one that seems particularly pointed given how quickly the owner of ‘The Melty Miser’ chose not to dismantle the Miser, or even to just let heat and gravity make a puddle out of him. The man chose to bury the Miser under a mountain of dirt and those hollow parts, kept solid in the cool earth, now form the Wayside attraction known as ‘Melty Miser Caverns.’’

The entrance to ‘Melty Miser Caverns’ doesn’t look like much but the maps I’ve located online all suggest that it roughly represents the anus of the titular Melty Miser. Maybe that’s why I loiter with Hector at the statue’s abandoned base, all shorn bolts and shattered plastic.

Finally, I push down my dignity and pull Hector into the caverns proper. We wander through the unstable stalactite fields of the groin (where visitors customarily use lighters to melt little plastic icicles from the ceiling). We peer into the psychedelic maze of the arms and squeeze through the tight passage formed by the left hand’s middle finger fusing with the money bag sometime post-impact and pre-burial (now heavily graffitied in UV-reactive paints). Finally, we emerge from between the Melty Miser’s lips and into a hollowed out room of natural earth. There, we cast our light on the excavated face of ‘The Melty Miser,’ massive and horrible in the dark.

-traveler

There are two fairly obvious red flags in the presentation of the otherwise very cheery ‘World’s Biggest Snowglobe.’ The first is that it’s walled off entirely- completely hidden from those who neglect to pay. It even sports a sort of gazebo structure that conceals it from satellite cameras, though the official purpose is to ‘prevent the unlikely scenario that light, refracted through the globe, might cause fires in the surrounding area.’ Profit concerns would have been a more convincing lie.

The second red flag is the price of the ticket that allows you to enter into “The Snowglobe” itself. Performed with scuba gear, this ticket is… free.

‘Would we call ‘The World’s Biggest Snowglobe’ a habitat? As much a habitat as any zoo, perhaps, because the people behind the glass live there but they don’t seem to like it much, even if they go through the motions of survival.’

I pay $20 for the regular entry ticket- the one that only allows me to interact with the globe from the outside. It’s the easiest $20 I’ve spent on the Wayside, if I’m honest. It has all the protective implications of a bribe and it comes with a free slushie.

‘The World’s Biggest Snowglobe’ is bigger than any building in the town I grew up. The shade from the gazebo is offset by lights within ‘The Globe’ itself. Street lights. Headlights. Bedroom lights, one has to assume. There is a village submerged in the glass and, though the cars and trees are fixed and decorative, the residences are clearly resided in. Two men swim past me, blown out of proportion by the curvature of their enclosure. I vigorously tap the glass, as signs all around the base of ‘The Globe’ suggest I do, and one of the men takes the time press his face up close. I assume this is necessary for him to get a good look at me, but it also allows him to flash a piece of bare skin, on which a message has been crudely tattooed:

Help. We are prisoners.

The men hurry on their way, and I take a sip of my slushie. Blue raspberry.

The only revelation, here, is that the people inside ‘The World’s Biggest Snowglobe’ assume the only thing stopping people from helping them escape is ignorance. They can’t know that, even from the outside, their situation is clear as day.

-traveler