Oddball Michigan: A Guide to 450 Really Strange Places

Description

There's more to Michigan than beautiful forests, shuttered factories, and miles and miles of stunning shoreline. Armed with this offbeat travel guide, you'll soon discover the strange underbelly of the Great Lakes State. Michigan has monuments to fluoridation, snurfing, the designer of the Jefferson nickel, and the once-famous Mr. Chicken, as well as festivals honoring tulips, Christmas pickles, and a 38-acre fungus. It's where you'll find the World's Largest Lugnut, the Nun Doll Museum, Joe's Gizzard City, the Teenie-Weenie Pickle Barrel Cottage, Howdy Doody, and Thomas Edison's last breath. The state also has its share of weird history--it's where Harry Houdini perished on Halloween night in 1926, where skater Tanya Harding's posse whacked Nancy Kerrigan, and where the Kellogg brothers invented popular breakfast cereals and less-popular yogurt enemas. Along with humorous histories and witty observations, Oddball Michigan provides addresses, websites, hours, fees, and driving directions for each of its 450 entries.

Jerome Pohlen is the author of the Oddball series and a regular travel commentator for 848 on WBEZ, the Chicago affiliate of National Public Radio. He is a recent recipient of the Illinois Associated Press Broadcasters Award for Best Essay. He lives in Chicago.

"Such grassroots creativity deserves to be celebrated, even by an author (Jerome Pohlen) who's from Chicago, a city which, let's be honest, cannot hold a candle to metro Detroit's oddball cred." -- Detroit Free Press "[A] wonderful, ingenious book." --ExclusiveMagazine.com "[A] good get to know us guide." --The Motor City Blog "In 450 funny blurbs, the author covers sights people might go out of their way for, as well as attractions one might check out while just passing through, providing location, cost, and contact information for each. Amusing, brisk, surprising, and slightly educational, this is a great resource for the discerning connoisseur of cheesy and eccentric tourist attractions of the Upper Midwest." -- Library Journal "Pohlen found some real gems. I can envision tour planners and operators using Oddball Michigan as they plan an itinerary. Tour guides could weave facts from the book into their narration." -- Group Tour Magazine "Taking a "normal" road trip with the kids sounds like a drag after flipping through Oddball Michigan: A Guide to 450 Really Strange Places ." --MetroParents.com "Pohlen found some real gems. I can envision tour planners and operators using Oddball Michigan as they plan an itinerary. Tour guides could weave facts from the book into their narration." -- Group Tour Magazine "The publicity may not be exactly what Pure Michigan promoters had in mind, but it's a lot more fun to read." -- Detroit Free Press "Pohlen seeks all that is weirdly wacky and wonderful in the Mitten State, often serving up the descriptions of his finds with a seriously sizeable side of snark." Midwest Guest