Loco Local Locales

Today's Arizona Daily Star has printed in their Accent section a great piece on Weird Arizona.

I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Valerie Vinyard last week on my travels to the Grand Canyon State and all the unusual stuff I saw out there. Naturally, being a Tucson-based paper, the Star was mostly interested in hearing about stuff in the "Old Pueblo," like Diamondback Bridge, the 280-foot rattlesnake spanning East Broadway; the Garden of Gethsemane, a decades-old park where you can lunch with Jesus; and El Tiradito, a shrine built in memoriam to an adulterer axed to death by the husband of his lover.

As mentioned in the article, the Tucson area tended to suck me in on my trips out west, but one can include only so much from one region when covering an entire state. One might infer from the article that I believe there are only six weird things in Tucson, but I'm certainly aware of many more; as a bonus for those of you who've followed the article here to the Roadside Resort, here's a list of several other sites in and around Tucson you might want to pay a visit:

  • The Titan Missile Museum, Sahuarita: The world's only ICBM silo turned museum, where you can sit down at the control panel and see the missile up-close. (Weird Arizona, pp. 152-154.)
  • Jerry Hall's World of Imagination, Tucson: Read about it right here.
  • The Tri-Lam House from Revenge of the Nerds, Tucson: The one the nerds fixed up as their frat house, at 931 N. Fifth Ave.
  • The Airplane Boneyard, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base: Thousands of retired military aircraft left baking in the sun. (Weird Arizona, pp. 222-223.)
  • Thunderhead Peacemakers and Longarms, Tucson: Where you can reportedly rent machine guns to shoot up blocks of ice, at 7777 E. Valencia Road.
  • The World's Largest Steer Skull, Amado: Walk through a giant cow's head, then have a steak. (Weird Arizona, p. 145.)
  • The Thing, Dragoon: Read about it right here.
  • Biosphere 2, Oracle: The human terrarium with too many bizarre stories and rumors to cover here, which is now open for tours. (Weird Arizona, pp. 127-129.)
  • The Tom Mix Monument, Florence: A lonesome, bullet-riddled memorial to the Western film star who ran his car into a wash and got brained by his own suitcase, on U.S. 79 near mile 116.

By the way, if you're blocked from viewing the article at the Star, try clearing your browser's cookies.

Oh, and it's Texas Twisted, not Twisted Texas. Nobody can ever get that right.

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