Not as bad as the names makes it out to be, ‘The Interactive Skin Museum’ is suitable for all ages and does occasionally surprise travelers with little informational tidbits in the style of the true museum. We are happy to, once again, award the institution with the yearly ‘Pretty Bearable, all things considered’ award. It is well deserved.’

Sometimes, like this time, the Guide sets me up for disappointment. On average I would say that those destinations the Guide warns against are as bad, or a little less bad, than stated on the page. Alternatively, I would say that those places it describes as good (or in this case, bearable) are routinely significantly worse. Maybe this a quirk of author bias. Maybe money is being passed under the table. More likely than not, these places are just aging poorly and, if they’re aware of their ranking in the Guide, they may be letting things slip a little past the wiggle room suggested by any dubious honor Autumn by the Wayside deems fit to offer.

Take ‘The Interactive Skin Museum,’ for instance. Like Boring, OR and Butthole, MA, ‘The Interactive Skin Museum’ has doubled down on their provocative name to sell stupid merch and generally draw in visitors that otherwise wouldn’t care about animal pelts, which is at the core of the actual experience. The ‘skin’ in question here is the pelts and the ‘interactivity’ is a total freedom to touch and wear those pelts, some of which, if their information is true and correct, come from endangered or even extinct species. These rarities are thrown so casually in with the common skins of North American forest animals that one has to question exactly what experience the owners of ‘The Interactive Skin Museum’ hope people have. If it’s not an appreciation for (and mourning of) the skins of lost species, is it a reconnection with nature? A themed sensory experience? A marketing ploy?

Employees of ‘The Interactive Skin Museum’ are required to remark positively on the skin of every visitor. They are not allowed, however, to purposefully touch a visitor’s skin except in emergencies. These details are known because a copy of the museum’s employee handbook leaked onto the internet last year. The handbook is long and thorough and one of the emergencies it lists as an acceptable time to engage in physical contact with a visitor is during a ‘skin fire,’ which is not defined. A boxed-off tip near the bottom of the emergency situation guide encourages employees to comment positively on the skin of visitors’ even during a crisis.

To calm things.

The actual museum is a warehouse that is, I would say, half pelts and half the sort of dusty insects that consume pelts in an uncontrolled environment. Moths, mostly, and silver fish. Still, people can’t help but want to drape themselves in the skin of a buffalo before encouraging their traveling partners to then dress in, say, the hide of a tiger. Two animals that would not likely meet naturally. The internet is filled with images of these combinations fighting. Mating. Performing brief, sitcom-like skits. Some of it is actually pretty funny, until you have experienced the smell of the place, which is not sharp, really, or rotting but definitely bad. Moldering in a meaty way. Dry, like a rash in the fold of skin.

The Guide draws the line at ‘bearable,’ reusing the same image of an uncredited man wearing a bearskin and standing atop a pile of deer pelts for nearly a decade of new editions to drive the point home. I guess I can’t disagree as I can count myself among those who have borne it.

But it’s still worse than I expect.

-traveler

‘There was an Old Abandoned Mall, still open to the public, available for urban exploration off I-90 near Lookout Pass on the Idaho-Montana border. Readers have noted its absence in recent editions and so we’ve written a short blurb here, to explain.

‘The Old Abandoned Mall’ did not burn down. It is not haunted or cursed or the headquarters of a conservative militia. For a while, ‘The Old Abandoned Mall’ was host to an informal flea market where one could purchase eccentric trinkets and stolen electronics and sometimes firearms with legally dubious paperwork. An awareness of this gray market spread and it soon became expensive. Law enforcement made occasional appearances before a permanent security position was filled. The pickings became mundane but word was already out and new customers filed in.

The low rent, the crowds, and the heightened security soon caught the attention of local business owners. A cigar lounge opened. A craft store. Several more established iterations on the flea market appeared- vintage re-sellers. A hobby store took two vacancies, one for the storefront and another for hosting games. A pop-up coffee stall established itself nearby to serve the growing population of regulars.

‘The Old Abandoned Mall’ is no longer abandoned- no longer host to any particularly strange businesses or activities. It is a living, mundane place for the time being.

But rent has gone up. Interest is down. Watch here for when ‘The Old Abandoned Mall’ returns to the Wayside.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside

The government’s non-acknowledgement of ‘The Crash Site’ and the site’s potent toxicity have put everyone in a bit of a catch-22. On one hand, it has made for what is perhaps the most subversive stop on the Wayside. ‘The Crash Site,’ after all, is assumed to be the sprawled totality of an alien spaceship or the burst remains of a supervillainous lair. It is peppered with psychedelic crystals and threaded-through with stiff, paper-thin steel.

Everything inside the site proper is lethally radioactive. Geiger counters indicate danger several yards out and, rather than dissipating, the radiation has only grown stronger. Several informal lookout sites have been established and then abandoned again as the dangerous area grows wider at the fringes. On a bad day, the radiation will sometimes reach the highway. It’s weak, now, but there are questions about what should be done and whether a car passing through at reasonable speeds will be enough to protect travelers who had no intention of stopping. 

The government sees no problem.

The crystals and the metal have thus far proven too dangerous to steal away. They manifest shallow ribbon cuts on any flesh within three inches or so. They cut and burn, even through protective equipment. The cuts do not easily heal and, for the span of about a day, they are contagious. The burns blister and scar and blister again, sometimes for years after contact. Souvenirs are only theoretically possible and, as always, not worth the price.’

You couldn’t pay me to get close enough to ‘The Crash Site’ to experience any of what the Guide affectionately downplays as ‘side-effects.’ I view it, instead, from an area nearly half a mile away where an enterprising person has planted a pair of those pay-per-view binocular systems, configured in such a way as to be immune to the unexplained visual distortion that plagues most normal looking devices. A sign near the binoculars suggests the immunity can be attributed to the device’s being made from material retrieved from ‘The Crash Site’ which, if I wasn’t 100% sure this was a lie, would have made it a no-go as well.

Observed from a safe distance, ‘The Crash Site’ is beautiful like a snake, sharp and oilslick in the sun. The crystals sparkle and gline, dust-free despite the arid New Mexico desert. Despite the wind. Despite years of weathering and covert attempts to smother the area in something that would block the radiation or at least keep people at bay.

The only other visitors are two teen boys who seem to be daring each other to approach, who are already so much closer than I would ever be to something unknown and dangerous. One of the boys runs at the site, swoops in close and then circles back to where he started. The second boy does the same, only he cuts deeper and he trips, stumbles to the ground. Lies facedown. The first boy calls for him. He pulls out his phone but remembers that it is off- that turning it on too close to ‘The Crash Site’ will cause the battery to swell and burst. He runs back toward the car that brought them, is still running, facing away, when the fallen boy stands and brushes himself off and trots after. 

A joke, maybe? They say ‘The Crash Site’ changes some people, but nobody seems to know how. 

The wind changes and my vision warps. I leave the binoculars with time left and try to remember the person I was just before. I think I was the same, but I won’t ever really be sure. 

-traveler

I don’t know the in-and-out legalities of every state, but someone once told me that booby traps, even those established well in the bounds of one’s private property, are largely off the table. I haven’t looked it up since then- I try not to use my phone when I’m driving- but this fact was delivered with the surety of a professional party-pooper and, though I had no real plans to set traps up myself (or any piece of property for those traps to protect) I was a little disappointed. Even more disappointing was my understanding that, having survived a booby-trap, an erstwhile victim might sue the creator of the traps. Meaning there is monetary gain to be had from entering and surviving a booby trap. 

It feels like that goes against the point. 

‘Willow Lake’ seems to think that proper signage will mitigate any lawsuits resulting from their ‘tradition,’ but I suspect that the only surefire defense is a great deal of money for settling cases out of court (though not as much money asked in the lawsuit itself). It’s hard to find a sympathetic jury when it’s kids who are drowning. 

‘Long before images of the eerie geometrical ice patterns began to make to make the news and long before the quick publicity pivot that seemed to suggest the patterns had been the intent all along, there was this idea for a manmade hot spring. A hot lake. A hot lake where residents of the highly exclusive ‘Willow Lake’ community could soak or steam in the winter months- could watch little clouds rising from the surface of the water from their bedroom windows and enclosed balconies. 

But it’s hard to heat that much water and to keep it heated without some sort of insulating cover. As the first round of cold months made the water inhabitable and as haphazard suggestions that ice plunges were, in fact, very trendy fell on deaf ears, the lake started to freeze. 

But it didn’t freeze totally. 

The windblown surface of the water developed a crystal skin that captured air patterns in its formation. It was beautiful and fleeting. No pattern remained for long before a sudden gust broke the ice and remade the surface. It was more entertaining and far more unique than the original hot spring idea had been and so the very-wealthy residents were comforted. 

Then two children, a brother and a sister, fell through the ice and drowned. They had been visiting their grandparents (residents of Willow Lake) and were promised ice skating by their parents, who had misunderstood the situation entirely and, upon hearing of the thin ice, had forbidden them from going anywhere near it (an action that seemed to have catalyzed their intent). 

These children were the first of many. Kids loved the lake and no matter how many signs the operators of ‘Willow Lake’ put up, the kids either wouldn’t heed the warnings. Rumors spread of a ‘daring’ game. A game of how far out someone could get into the lake without falling in. Worse, rumors spread of a deep apathy among ‘Willow Lake’ residents. The HOA, in particular, had been skeptical of the signage at the start, fearing it would undermine the simple aesthetic of the community and prove to be controversial among residents who feared having their rights- any of their rights- taken away or limited by third parties. 

Betting pools formed between people of a certain child-hating sub-community, these people generally having become too angry and tired by the world to see or interact with children in any way, or being so traumatized by the reciprocal bad treatment by their own children, that they were willing to make a game of the ongoing tragedies. 

The patterns at ‘Willow Lake’ remain, and so does the signage. Little else has changed about the situation and some fear we have witnessed the rise of some child-killing cult. Though no proof of this has yet made circulation, religions have formed around less interesting premises.’

-traveler

‘It’s suspicious, isn’t it? Anything that’s free? Is that true, universally speaking, or is it a uniquely American understanding of the volatile lust for profit? We understand the dangers of gasoline, but we still use it to propel our cars. We tell ourselves it is controlled and ignore the occasional fire. The cancers. The damage to climate. Fuel is the way propel our cars and profit is the way we propel our lives and we must accept the inherent dangers if we want to get anywhere at all.

Right?

‘The Pest Depository’ advertises itself as a free service and it is convenient and clean and well-staffed, attributes one might expect a non-profit to have one, maybe two of total. It operates with the sure confidence of a cult, its employees well-dressed and enthusiastic but hardly forthcoming. There is an emphasis on the value of life- of all life. Of the lives of pests.

This seems important.

‘The Pest Depository’ does not catch pests. Its services do not extend beyond their several locations in the state of New Jersey, aside from the occasional pop-up at conventions and fairs. They take only lives pests but they take them all with equal reverence: mice, possums, insects, bats. They have the means of ungluing rodents from traps, but only if they are allowed to keep the result. They claim to set broken bones, though they offer no public menagerie of recovering souls.

They do not, in fact, make any claims about what happens to the ‘pests’ once they have been deposited.

Whatever they do, it must pay the rent.’

-an excerpt, Autumn by the Wayside