When planning a road trip, there's a few states that strike a certain kind of fear into traveler's hearts: the flyover states. How long can the kids sit still? How long can I drive before the endless stretches of farmland finally get to me? Will I get a cell phone signal?
Fortunately, for the adventurous roadtripper, states like Nebraska actually hold a wealth of hidden gems that most travelers miss out on when they decide to "fly over". Here's a shortlist of our favorite offbeat road trip stops in the Cornhusker State.
Located in the Boys Town Visitor's' Center sits a whole museum dedicated to the age-old passtime of stamp collecting. The Leon Myers Stamp Center exists to promote stamp collecting and supports Boys Town programs by selling donated stamps to collectors. The really incredible thing about the museum, however, is located in the gift shop.
Squeezed inside the souvenir shop is the world's largest ball of stamps, created with well over 4.6 million of the licked postage. Someone's tongue is sore.
The National Museum of Roller Skating is "committed to enriching people's lives by increasing their understanding and enjoyment of roller skating's past." It's also pretty freakin' weird. I mean, after all, it's a museum that exists exclusively to collect, preserve, and display the history of roller skating.
When you think of an outdoor getaway, you probably don't think of Nebraska, but the Sandhills Region is a surprisingly beautiful outdoor paradise in the plains. Still not sold? How about the fact that you can float down the Middle Loup River in a giant stock tank turned boat?
Offered by the Sandhills Motel, the stock tank river float is about as close as you're going to get to recreating that scene from The Hobbit where the dwarves float downstream in barrels.
Sure, England has the huge and mysterious Stonehenge, but nothing makes for a better monument than American steel. At Carhenge, the famous Stonehenge is recreated with, you guessed it, cars. Just like its counterpart across the pond, Carhenge is aligned with the solstices and has even found itself as a feature in numerous films.
Thirty-eight automobiles were placed to assume the same proportions as Stonehenge with the circle measuring approximately 96 feet in diameter. Some autos are held upright in pits five feet deep, trunk end down, while those cars which are placed to form the arches have been welded in place. All are covered with gray spray paint. The honor of depicting the heel stone goes to a 1962 Caddy.
Carhenge is open every single day of the year, but you're going to want to show up during daylight hours to really take it in.
Definitely the strangest museum in the entire state, and they have museums dedicated to corn. Seriously.
It's often referred to as the "Oldest Cabin in the World", and thats definitely true, at least on a technicality. You see, this bizarre cabin is made out of dinosaur bones.
Almost as interesting as the relics themselves is where they came from. The fossils used to make up the Cabin, deemed by Ripley's Believe It or Not as the oldest house on Earth, are leftover from the great "Bone Wars" in the late 1800s. During the wars, two wealthy paleontologists, Edward Drinker Cope (of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia) and Othniel Charles Marsh (of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale), fought tooth and nail (sorry, had to) against each other for dinosaur supremacy. Their battle lasted over two decades, got super dirty, and ended up financially ruining both men.
The cabin is located on old US 30, the "Lincoln Highway", and offers lots of fascinating history in a very weird little location. Particularly interesting are the fossilized foot pads of the huge creatures!
