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. “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 “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 Jerome Pohlen is an editor and travel writer whose travel writing has appeared in the Chicago Reader , Readers Digest , and TimeOut Chicago . He is the author of the Oddball series and Progressive Nation . He has been a regular contributor on travel and culture for the 848 Show on WBEZ, Chicago’s NPR affiliate. He lives in Chicago. Oddball Michigan A Guide to 450 Really Strange Places By Jerome Pohlen Chicago Review Press Incorporated Copyright © 2014 Jerome Pohlen All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-61374-893-0 Contents INTRODUCTION, 1. THE UPPER PENINSULA, 2. NORTHERN MICHIGAN, 3. WESTERN MICHIGAN, 4. CENTRAL MICHIGAN, 5. EASTERN MICHIGAN, 6. DETROIT AND SUBURBS, 7. THE CHRISTMAS TOUR, EPILOGUE, ACKNOWIEDGMENTS, RECOMMENDED SOURCES, CITY INDEX, SITE INDEX, CHAPTER 1 UPPER PENINSULA Something happens when you drive north across the Mackinac Bridge into Michigan's Upper Peninsula, or UP as it's referred to in shorthand. The trees get a little denser, the service gets a little slower, and the backwoods drawls get a little thicker. It's almost as if you've entered a different state, and certainly a different state of mind. In fact, the UP might never have been a part of Michigan. Back when Michigan was a territory hoping to become the nation's newest state, there was a border dispute over the so-called Toledo Strip; two early maps drew the southern boundary at different parallels. (Ohio had the better argument — it had been a US state with an established border since 1803.) Between 1835 and 1837, both Ohio and Michigan sent militias to the area to assert their claims. The Toledo Gazette sniffed that the Michigan militia was "composed of the lowest and most miserable dregs of the community ... low drunken frequenters of grog shops, who had been hired at a dollar a day," and events bore that out. The so-called "Toledo War" turned into a series of shoving matches and liquor-fueled brawls, but nobody was ever killed defending Toledo. Which seems right. Finally, President Andrew Jackson brokered a deal. In exchange for ceding its claims to the Toledo Strip, Michigan was given statehood and three-quarters of the Upper Peninsula, which was then part of the Wisconsin Territory. On January 26, 1837, Michigan became the 26th state in the union. But not everyone was, or is, happy about the deal. In 1978 a bill was introduced to the Michigan state legislature by Rep. Dominic Jacobetti making the Upper Peninsula its own state: Superior. Pe