I visited the Abita Mystery House (or, more accurately, it visited me) in backwater Louisiana a few years back, and it remains the gold standard of roadside attractions.

Owner/eccentric John Preble, inspired by Albuquerque’s Tinkertown masterpiece (tucked away in the Sandias), opened up UCM Museum – You See ‘Em or, technically, Unusual Collections and Mini-Town – in 1998. You enter via a 1930’s gas station in tiny Abita Springs and stumble mind-bogingly upon 50,000 found and recycled objects or, as the wonderfully outdated and retro web site warns: “Tourists see a miniature Southern town with push-buttons that activate animated ‘displays.’  On exhibit are odd collections, memorabilia, pure junk, and old arcade machines that are fun to play.”

But wait. There’s a “100yr old Louisiana Creole cottage, an exhibition hall of memorabilia and junk, and the much photographed House of Shards…a Mardi Gras parade, a New Orleans jazz funeral, a rhythm and blues dance hall, a haunted Southern plantation, and much more!”

Visually stunning, splattered with humor, and sultry as only the Louisiana bayou can do, all of it resides an hour north of New Orleans.  What’s keeping you?  [please hover over images for captions]