Weekend Warrior
12 regional road trips for arts eats and oddities
Last year, 33 million Americans hit the road over Memorial Day Weekend, kicking off summer by hopping in the car and heading for the highway in search of relaxing destinations and sandy locales. But if you haven’t planned for a full-blown getaway this long holiday weekend, there’s still time to design a regional road trip — something a little closer to home, but equally as interesting. We’ve compiled a list of drive-worthy finds within a couple hundred miles of Cincinnati to satisfy all types of people (or at least some types). With selections spanning art adventures, epicurean escapes, interesting oddities and tiny towns, you’re bound to find a reason to buckle up and go.
— Maija Zummo, Project Editor
Offbeat Attractions
Unique destinations for education, escapism and celebrity wax figure Jesus-es
The roadside attraction is a quintessentially American construct. Anchored in the nostalgia of Route 66, Airstream trailers and a bit of Thelma & Louise, our national narrative feeds off experiences like veering off the highway to visit the Corn Palace, a peanut statue that looks like Jimmy Carter, an abandoned Cadillac Stonehenge or even Northern Kentucky’s Vent Haven ventriloquism museum; it’s Manifest Destiny with a side of old-fashioned kitsch. A windows-down adventure epitomizes the lure of a summertime road trip, and these three destinations — Cleveland’s Percy Skuy Collection on the History of Contraception, Mansfield’s BibleWalk Bible Museum and Alliance’s Troll Hole Museum — while not exactly the “world’s largest donut,” have enough camp and quirk to warrant a long weekend away and several weird Instagram posts.
THE PERCY SKUY COLLECTION ON THE HISTORY OF CONTRACEPTION
Case Western Reserve University, 10900 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, Ohio, case.edu // Approximate Drive Time: 4 hours
Last week, Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio filed a lawsuit against the state of Ohio in an effort to hold off legislation passed earlier this year by Gov. John Kasich, which would defund part of the organization’s healthcare services and sexual education programs. So now might be an apt time to take a little stroll through the history of humanity’s previous contraceptive efforts at Case Western Reserve University’s Percy Skuy Collection.
Housed in the campus’ Dittrick Medical History Center and Museum, it’s one of the world’s leading collections on the history, politics and folklore surrounding contraception, featuring fascinating and bizarre displays of all the weird stuff people have eaten, worn or put inside of themselves to try to prevent pregnancy before the advent of modern medicine and low-cost, comprehensive science-based sex ed.
“As Percy Skuy says, the collection represents a sociological story of human ingenuity and creativity in devising methods to control fertility,” says chief curator
Dr. James M. Edmonson.
Skuy was the CEO of a Canadian Johnson & Johnson affiliate that marketed contraceptive technology — everything from diaphragms and spermicidal gels in the 1940s to birth control pills and IUDs in the 1960s and the patch in the 2000s — and over his 30-plus years in the business, he built up his “Museum of Contraception,” as he called it, and donated the items to the Dittrick in 2004.
The sheer volume and variety of what humans have used as contraceptive devices over time is amazing, and we’re not just talking Coca-Cola douches.
The permanent exhibition, Virtue, Vice, and Contraband: A History of Contraception in America, features more than 1,000 objects related to birth control, including what is undoubtedly the world’s largest collection of IUDs. (They sell an awesome Things Organized Neatly-style poster of intrauterine devices of all shapes, sizes and colors online.) Most objects date from the 1800s onward, but basically since people have been having sex (#always), they’ve been trying not to have babies, and the collection reflects that.
Artifacts include amulets made from weasel testicles and mule’s earwax, vaginal suppositories of elephant and crocodile dung, cervical caps made from lemon rinds and teapot lids and condoms constructed out of candy wrappers.
Additional books, films, pamphlets and other informative ephemera outline more ingenious and sometimes completely misguided methods of birth control. More than 4,000 years ago, women in China drank mercury to prevent pregnancy, and since it’s a poison it was probably highly effective — dead people can’t get pregnant. In the maritime province of New Brunswick, women would imbibe a tincture made of dried beaver testicles, possibly for the testosterone. In Africa, women used hollowed-out okra sacs as female condoms. And the women of Easter Island would just stick some seaweed in front of the entrance to their cervix and hope for the best.
The museum also touches on the future of contraception, like male birth control pills, and contextualizes this multifaceted collection, summing up our fertility journey from antiquity to today, examining not only “products” but also society’s attempt to control contraceptive efforts and the religious and ethical catechism surrounding procreation.
“Perhaps the collection provides testimony to the fact that humans have been at this pursuit for several millennia, and that it is not just something of recent origin,” says Edmonson.
And after you’re done looking at myriad douching devices and vagina poisons, Cleveland has a lot more to offer, obviously.
BIBLEWALK BIBLE MUSEUM
500 Tingley Ave., Mansfield, Ohio, biblewalk.us // Approximate Drive Time: 2 hours 45 minutes
As enjoyable as the Creation Museum’s disregard for logic and science is in the name of finding answers in Genesis — dinosaurs were dragons; incest used to be OK — the BibleWalk Bible Museum is a dream come true for those non-denominational Christians who want to experience the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ firsthand (through a staged recreation)… or for those assholes with a strong interest in seeing low-budget repurposed celebrity wax figures dressed like characters from the Bible (aka us).
Ohio’s largest and only wax museum is dedicated to bringing the Bible to life through 78 full-scale scenic dioramas featuring more than 300 wax mannequins, original music and dramatic lighting.
Situated in a functional church (across the street from the historic and haunted Mansfield Reformatory prison), the BibleWalk museum was constructed by the congregants of Diamond Hill Cathedral and volunteers; they built the building, made scenic props, sewed costumes, recorded narration, styled mannequin hair and created some basic animatronics for all five of the current themed tours: The Life of Christ, The Miracles of the Old Testament, Heart of the Reformation, The Museum of Christian Martyrs and Amazing Grace: The Journeys of Paul.
BibleWalk started when pastor Richard Diamond and his wife, Alwilda, felt a heavenly calling after a visit to a historic wax museum in Atlanta in the 1970s. They saw an interpretation of the Ascension of Jesus Christ and were “brought to tears and brought to their knees,” according to the museum’s website. That’s when Diamond says he knew God wanted him to build a religious wax museum.
Not surprisingly, new wax figures were and are prohibitively expensive. But the church has been collecting much cheaper models from defunct wax attractions since 1983, including pop culture institutions like Madame Tussauds. This means — to our great joy — that some of the figures are rejected dummies of famous people.
The director of the museum, Julia Mott-Hardin, doesn’t publicize the actor/actress aspect — BibleWalk is supposed to be about the glory of God, not Hollywood Scientologists in Christian drag — but the museum does have a small blurb about how the mannequins were sourced, and does confirm that some were once celebrity waxworks in a former life.
Inside you’ll see Britain’s Prince Philip dressed as an angel; Elizabeth Taylor looking like Cleopatra in the baby-in-half parable with King Solomon, as played by a designer imposter John Travolta; Robert Downey Jr. in a beard as John the Baptist about to dip a Tom Cruise Jesus and more.
They also have campy scenes with non-celebrities, like Jonah escaping from the gullet of a plushie whale, the crucifixion, Job covered in horrifying popcorn boils and a Bible story with someone that looks like they’re transforming into a werewolf?
The self-guided tours last between half an hour and a full hour for each theme. In front of each display, you press a big white button to start the narration, and you can’t start the next scene until you’ve heard the full message of the previous (benches are provided). The best bang for your buck is the Old Testament tour. Even though the Museum of Christian Martyrs tour sounds absolutely surreal, the figures don’t actually depict anyone’s physical martyrdom, just the moment when they decided to become a martyr, so... boring.
And, if you get hungry walking through all that biblical history, there’s an in-house Christian dinner theater company, with live-action interpretative religious plays accompanied by a full meal. (Or there are regularly scheduled murder mystery dinners in the Mansfield Prison, for more of a real ghost and less of a Holy Ghost experience.)
THE TROLL HOLE MUSEUM
228 E. Main St., Alliance, Ohio, thetrollhole.com // Approximate Drive Time: 4 hours
Sherry Groom has a double identity. On one hand, she’s a mental health nurse and mother of four. On the other, she’s Sigrid, a mythological troll queen who leads humans on an intellectual and spiritual journey through her Alliance, Ohio museum to understand the magic of trolls.
“Sigrid is a huldra, a troll disguised as a human so she can entice men into marrying her,” Groom says. “So under my skirts I do have a tail that drags around. For group tours or events, Sigrid will come out.”
Groom is the owner of The Troll Hole, a completely unique two-story museum that houses the largest troll doll collection in the world, according to Guinness. Groom’s 45-minute guided tour covers everything from ancient troll mythology to the neon-haired jewel-bellied troll dolls of the 1960s and 1990s. It includes waterfalls, a troll grotto and bridge, a troll mountain and more than 18,000 troll dolls and memorabilia, including authentic troll dolls with tails.
“We go from the mythological Scandinavian history — magical, supernatural trolls — all the way up to the troll dolls and the current phenomenon: DreamWorks is making a movie and trying to refranchise the trolls,” says Groom, referencing the forthcoming animated adventure with voicework from Justin Timberlake and Anna Kendrick. “Our latest exhibit is called Are Trolls Real? You Decide at the troll education center, which is kind of like Big Foot; we have maps and skulls and fossils of troll evidence. It’s kind of tongue-in-cheek.”
Supernatural creatures that bring wealth and luck, trolls inhabit the northernmost part of Europe, says Groom, who started collecting the dolls because of their magical quality and a sense of nostalgia.
Nostalgia is a shared emotion for many visitors. “More than 70 percent of people who take the tour go, ‘I had that one! I had that troll,’ ” says Groom. “A lot of people really connect with looking to see what trolls they had. It’s a worldwide phenomenon, and we have people from all over the world coming to the museum.”
Although she admits global visitors probably didn’t travel to Alliance just for the Troll Hole, a lot of visitors do come for nearby attractions like the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
“The number-one comment is, ‘I never knew that there was so much here,’ ” Groom says. “Even people who are dragged here by other people find it entertaining.”
Added entertaining bonus: The Cat Fanciers’ Association Feline Historical Museum is next door, home to a cathouse designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright for the Gerald B. Tonkens family of Cincinnati, among other feline memorabilia. ©
