Laughing All the Way

​Feeling a little (or a lot) weighed down lately? I know I have been. With dreadful things happening around the world, and many friends and family members facing difficult challenges, it's sometimes hard to find reasons to smile.

​Yet even in rough times, a little levity can help us cope. In that spirit, I'm taking a look back at some of the funny and light-hearted things we've come across in our recent travels.

​One way I amuse myself on long road trips is by collecting funny names of roads, businesses, and other points of interest. I don't do this in any organized way—I just scribble them down in whatever notebook I have at hand. It's a treat to come across those notations later, when I'm thumbing through the pages, looking for the name of a book someone mentioned or the phone number of a tradesman I saw on a street-corner sign, or whatever else I've stowed in the same notebook.

​On our latest trip out west, we chuckled at a highway exit sign for Bad Route Road, and then laughed harder when we saw the next sign advising trucks to exit there. On the same stretch of Montana highway, we encountered Whoop-Up Creek Road. I guess if you make it through the Bad Route, you've got something to whoop about.

​​Some place names just make you wonder how they came by those monikers. Take Tongue River, for instance. Or Fourth of July Creek. I Googled that one while working on this piece and didn't find out the origins of the name, but I did discover author Smith Henderson's 2014 novel by the same name. Looks like another book worth jotting down in that little notebook and adding to my to-read list.

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​In Seattle, our friends Laurel and Darwin took us on a day trip to Kitsap Peninsula, which included a visit to a finger of land known as Point No Point. According to a source cited in Wikipedia, explorer Charles Wilkes gave the place its name because "it appears much less of a promontory at close range than it does from a distance." I don’t know about that, as I didn't view it from a distance (I didn't see the point--ha, ha), but I will say that there is a point to visiting Point No Point: seeing the oldest lighthouse on Puget Sound and enjoying the driftwood sculptures and furnishings that decorate the grounds.

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Point No Point Lighthouse

This driftwood horse is another point of interest at Point No Point

As is this lovely garden bench

Hats off to this creative landmark

​On our drive back to Michigan, we saw other sights that made us smile.

​In Kellogg, Idaho, there's a circular building topped with an oversized miner's helmet and lantern. Built in 1939, it was originally a roadside diner where workers from nearby lead and silver mines stopped for Coneys and beers. After a stint as a 1950s drive-in restaurant, it closed in 1963, but reopened in 1991 as a realty office, which is what it remains.

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Construction barrel creation

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​Even highway rest stops can serve up some smiles. Weary of construction delays toward the end of our travels last spring, we came across this jaunty fellow in one rest area. 

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​And on our most recent trip, we encountered this frighteningly funny chap at a pit stop. Two truck drivers were preparing to station the skeleton at the controls of a piece of equipment they were transporting. They told me they planned to put a sign on Mr. Bones's back reading "I WAS TEXTING."

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The lengths people will go to, just to relieve highway monotony!

​More merriment came from the names of businesses we passed along the way: Garden of Read'n bookstore in Missoula and Animal House Veterinary Hospital in Forsyth, Montana. Then there was the billboard that warranted a double take, with its ad for the Rock Creek Testicle Festival.

​You know I had to look that one up! Turns out it's an annual event famous for dishing up the local delicacy known as Rocky Mountain oysters—breaded and deep-fried cattle testicles—and sponsoring such contests as the Undie 500 tricycle race. I should say it was an annual event, as the Testy Fest (motto: "Have a ball") was discontinued this year, following a series of incidents, including fatal crashes caused by festival-goers, in previous years. 

​The owner of the lodge that hosted the rowdy event for 35 years said attendance—which once numbered more than 10,000 people—also had been dropping, due at least in part to social media. Apparently not all attendees cared to have footage of their festival antics posted on Facebook.

​Though I'm a big fan of festivals (read more about that here), I think this is one I'm not sorry to have missed. At this stage in life, I'm content to get my amusement from road signs and sights. And newspaper headlines, which are sometimes downright funny, but more often ironic in their placement. 

​One day, for instance, the front pages of Montana Standard  and Great Falls Tribune were crowded with news of corruption and strife—a sheriff charged with felonies, nastiness between two state senate candidates—but anchored with a story bearing this headline: "Labyrinths across state bring peace, meditation."

​Let's hope so.

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What has tickled your funny bone lately? 
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