Midwest Road Trip With Kids: 6 Quirky Roadside Attractions Your Whole Family Will Love
If your crew is due for an adventure beyond the usual theme parks and splash pads, consider loading up the car and heading for the heartland. The Midwest is home to some of the most wonderfully weird roadside attractions in the country — the kind of stops that make kids press their faces to the window and beg you to pull over.
Here are six worth building a road trip around.
Corn Palace — Mitchell, South Dakota
The Corn Palace is exactly what it sounds like: a massive building covered entirely in murals made from real corn, grain and grasses. Established in 1892, the murals are redesigned every year with a new theme, which means there is always something new to see. The Corn Palace also hosts an annual festival with food, entertainment and carnival rides — making it an easy place to spend a full afternoon with the family.
World’s Largest Ball of Twine — Cawker City, Kansas
A farmer named Frank Stoeber started the World’s Largest Ball of Twine in 1953. Stoeber had lots of leftover twine from years of feeding his cows bales of hay. He thought it would be a fun activity and good exercise to roll it into a giant ball, so he did. The ball eventually made appearances at the county fair and the city’s Centennial parade, becoming a local attraction. It now weighs over 17,000 lbs. The best part for families? Visitors are invited to add to it. Call or email Ball of Twine Caretaker Linda Clover and she will give you a tour, a history lesson and some sisal twine to add to the ball. Kids will love saying they helped make it bigger.
The Spam Museum — Austin, Minnesota
If your family enjoys the quirky side of Americana, the Spam Museum in Austin, Minnesota, delivers. This free museum is entirely dedicated to the canned pork product, featuring interactive exhibits covering the brand’s history, its uses, its popularity during World War II and more. There is also a gift shop with fun and quirky Spam merch.
Carhenge — Alliance, Nebraska
Carhenge is a full-scale replica of Stonehenge built entirely out of vintage American cars painted gray. Created by Jim Reinders in 1987 in memory of his late father who used to live on the farmland the sculpture sits on, it is an unforgettable photo op in the middle of the Nebraska plains. The site is open year-round from dawn to dusk, and there is a gift shop open seasonally. Kids will marvel at its scale.
American Gothic House — Eldon, Iowa
The American Gothic House is the actual farmhouse from Grant Wood’s iconic 1930 painting “American Gothic.” The visitor’s center is open year-round, Wednesday through Sunday (check their events calendar online for any holidays or changes). You can pose in front of the house for photos and even borrow a pitchfork and period costume from the visitor’s center. Even if the visitor’s center is closed, you can pose in front of the house any time from dawn till dusk.
Gemini Giant — Wilmington, Illinois
The Gemini Giant is a 28-foot fiberglass 1960s “Muffler Man” astronaut holding a silver rocket. Named after Project Gemini, NASA’s second human spaceflight program that ran from 1961 to 1966, the statue stood outside a Route 66 diner from 1965 to 2024. In 2024, the Joliet Area Historical Museum acquired it with the goal of preserving it and moved it to Wilmington’s South Island Park. It is a memory of the Space Age craze — and a guaranteed kid magnet.
Each of these stops is free or low-cost, easy to work into a longer drive and packed with the kind of stories kids will retell for years.
This article was created by content specialists using various tools, including AI.
