I’m torn between hoping that this is literally the street that takes you to Canada, and it having nothing to do with Canada, thus confusing the shit out of thousands of poor travellers just looking for a way to Canada.
Oh, man, I can’t believe I forgot my favorite Tourist Trap spot!
If you’re willing to cross the border, Canada’s side of Niagara Falls is awesome. The area around the Falls is a dignified, Parks Canada kind of experience, but just a short walk away is the Clifton Hill district. Just about any kind of silly tourist trap kind of attraction you can name, with motels all around it. I love it!
Considering that Six Flags used to have one, I’ve always known they’re bogus. Near the end they put a Van der Graff generator in a faux Aztec statue and twirled a florescent bulb around
One of my fondest memories of the Black Hills isn’t Mt. Rushmore or any of the “major” attractions, but Dinosaur Park, high on a hill overlooking Rapid City. I must have been 7 or 8 when we went there on a family road trip and I make a point of visiting it every time I’m in the area.
I recently watched a YouTube vid of a guy retracing what remains of Route 66.
The Teepee Motel is still open. The youtuber stopped there.They’re nice inside with AC and wi-fi. It was built during Route 66 heyday.
There’s still a few old attractions on Route 66. Most have closed. Its still interesting to see the abandoned places.
It’s the main drag, NY Route 9, and does indeed take you to Canada if you stay on it. No one does these days – the Adirondack Northway (I-87) has supplanted it – but when the village was laid out, it did take you to Canada.
Gawd damn it! This is what I came in here to post.
Was just out it Rapid City in May. First time in over 26 years.
There are still a bunch of mom and pop motels. Some of them seedy with a bunch of methheads hanging around!
If you don’t have breakfast at Joey’s Pancake House, you don’t deserve to come back to MV.
A tip: if you’re going to be staying in MV for any length of time, it is just about the same cost to rent a house as to stay at the Best Western. Several real estate agencies with numerous beautiful/rustic houses to rent. Worth an inquiry. Tell 'em burpo sent you!
Wasn’t Florida the poster child for small hotel/tourist traps once upon a time? I’m sure there are still some around, but I think the Interstate System and Disney put the kibosh on a lot of that.
I give you–The Dismals! Second husband and I were driving from Huntsville, AL down to New Orleans and back and saw this place in the road atlas so we went there. There was nobody around, nothing to explain WTF the Dismals might be or why this weird tumbledown tourist attraction was there, but we wandered down the canyon, which is beautiful, and noticed that the trees were all marked with their species and taxonomic designation, all a part of an Eagle Scout project so that was cool. Continued on our way and it wasn’t until decades later when the internet was invented that I looked the place up and figured out what it’s all about.
Or there’s Bodie, a very cool old mining ghost town that’s about a million miles from nowhere but if you’re feeling adventurous it’s a lot of fun, in a peeping into old windows sort of way. I like Bodie.
The Bagnell Dam strip at Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri has become more civilized in the past few years, but you can still find many t-shirt shops, oyster bars (in the middle of Missouri), “bikers welcome” bars, kitchy souvenir shops and at least one good old fashioned arcade. My family still cherishes the genuine oil painting we won at skee-ball there.
Tim Hollis has a couple of terrific books full of ephemera from the early heydays of Florida tourism. Well worth checking out if you want to take a virtual roadtrip: Selling the Sunshine State: A Celebration of Florida Tourism Advertising and Wish You Were Here: Classic Florida Motel and Restaurant Advertising.
Stationed at Redstone Arsenal, were you?
Nifty! Thanx!
No, second husband worked for the State of California and was attending a CAD symposium hosted by Intergraph and they booked the Space Museum, which was pretty goshdarned cool. I flew out from CA to join him and we went on a seven state driveathon that had the southerners blanching at the very idea we’d DRIVE 800 miles to see New Orleans and we were like, what? We’d done that many miles just to attend a party and drove back late that night. West coast people think about driving distances differently than people from back east.
Great ref, thank you.
A few years ago, wife & I tried to drive from Miami to Jacksonville on Florida route A1A, the original boulevard about 100 feet inland from the beach. Intending to stop at random tourist kitsch along the way and stay in whichever random Mom’n’Pop motel had the fewest lounging methheads (thanks @pkbites; great hotel-picking rubric! 
)
Anyhow, the route still exists, and you can drive a lot of that 350-mile run not very far inland at 30 to 50 mph. And there’s still a few small towns left between the metro-suburb-blobs and the people-less wildlife refuges. Most of the classic kitsch is long gone, replaced by Holiday Inns, McDs, national franchise fast casual “dining”, and FL-based chains of beach toy stores. A disturbing percentage of which did (and seemingly still do) a brisk business in Trump-adoration merch. Sigh.
Of course it’s fake in the sense that some mysterious force may be interfering with gravity. It’s all forced perspective and playing with perceptions, which is kind of fun and interesting in its own right. But when I think ‘tourist trap’, I think Mystery Spot.
Wall, South Dakota itself exists for basically no reason other than to prey off tourists heading to the Badlands (8 miles away) or passing through on the way to the Black Hills. The Badlands themselves, at least in the days we visited, were notable for having only primitive services within or immediately surrounding the park. We stayed in a very basic cabin in the park and mostly ate at a small lunch counter that was still getting the hang of making hamburgers.
Route 1 winding through southern Maine is replete with motels and tourist traps (there’s one outlet that advertises “10,000” souvenirs). Local business interests in some towns have succeeded in keeping out chains, which hasn’t enhanced the quality of local food and accommodations - particularly in York, ME (motto: We Haven’t Gotten Over Ourselves), which zapped plans for a Mexican restaurant because the owner had one or two additional outlets in other Maine locales. “Chain” food? (shudder)
Another place with teepees as an option for rooms is the Kah-Nee-Ta resort in central Oregon. Its on the Warm Springs reservation and actually run by Native Americans.
The bad news: it closed a few years ago. The good news: it will re-open next year.
Oh, that’s way beyond goshdarned cool!
To be fair, people in the Deep South have no trouble going great distances to hit the CASINO!! Of course, most of that is done on a comfy tour bus. Also, in Florida, no one blinks an eye about getting up at 6:00AM to drive 3-4 hours to a flea market – to buy socks!! 
Klamath, CA, up on the North Coast near Redwoods National Park, has the Trees of Mystery, a good old fashioned family run tourist trap.
Most of the lodging in that area if you don’t want to camp in the National Park is mom and pop motels, RV parks, and cabins. Although looking at Google Maps there’s a brand new Holiday Inn Express in Klamath now, so the chains might be moving in.