The best road trips involve a stop at an oversized, fiberglass personage. I was born not too far from a restaurant shaped like a tamale and grew up alongside a King Midas Man and the world’s foremost tiki emporium, so I'm predisposed to rank a Bigfoot museum a notch above the Legion of Honor on my list of critical tourist attractions.

While frequently tied to bygone eras, roadside treasures can still be found hiding in forgotten corners throughout the larger Bay Area. Below are some noteworthy examples.

Bigfoot Discovery Museum

You’ll squint your eyes and stroke your chin plenty at this shrine to Sasquatch. Owner Michael Rugg has been collecting all things Bigfoot since an early encounter in his youth. The first room exhibits fun Bigfoot sightings throughout pop culture’s history, but things get hairier in the second room. A blueberry iMac plays the Patterson-Gimlin film (the Zapruder film for Bigfoot buffs) on constant loop. A wall-size map is dotted with colored pins noting recent sightings. Plaster molds of oversized footprints are everywhere.

The titles in Rugg’s massive bookcase show the slippery slope between Bigfoot and alien abductions. “Many believe Bigfoot is a paranormal being that leaves glowing footprints and communicates telepathically,” he shared. I asked if he was one of those people. “I’m not there yet,” he replied. Rugg is also an artist with some interesting sketches of a sexy female Bigfoot biker and, possibly more telling, Bigfoot planting a huge marijuana plant in the forest floor.

5497 Highway 9, Felton, (831) 335-4478

Muffler Men of Hayward

Do you know the Muffler Man? Cranked out en masse by a Venice, California, fiberglass shop in the ’60s, these roadside giants hawked mufflers, car washes, and all other roadside services. There’s less than half of the original 400 scattered across the nation, and don’t think that there aren’t dedicated fans tracking them and filming their journeys. You’ll find the Bay Area’s largest collection in Hayward where Bruce Kennedy, the soft-spoken owner of Bell Plastics, has a towering collection of fiberglass statues that includes four muffler men (as of this writing; he’s kind of on a tear).

“The more clutter we have on our roadside the better,” Kennedy explained when prompted about his interest. “If a sign can be a rectangle, why not make it a whale?” Heads are interchangeable and he had custom versions created for the holidays (Uncle Sam for July 4th, demon skull for Halloween). Kennedy and his crew welcome visitors and offer to snap pics of you and the men. If a pic won’t suffice, you can take home a bobblehead version that Kennedy fabricates for each figure.

Bell Plastics, 2020 National Ave., Hayward, (510) 784-1111 

The Wax Last Supper

The whys and whos of this wax replica of da Vinci’s The Last Supper are a little murky, but from wherever it came, it found its final resting place at Santa Cruz Memorial cemetery. On my visit, I was greeted by Kurt, who dresses not too unlike The Office’s Dwight Schrute and is usually out retrieving corpses from homes.

Kurt led me into an eerie, pitch-dark viewing room and shut the door — while I tried to remember if I had told anyone where I was — before unveiling the life-size diorama. A little hazy on The Da Vinci Code plotline, I asked who the woman was stage right of Christ. “That’s John. He was very effeminate,” he stated in a don’t-cha-know tone of voice. I also wondered who else knows of this hidden gem. “Nuns and old people,” Kurt said. “Some ask me what the figures are saying to each other. That’s mostly the ones with dementia.”

Santa Cruz Memorial, 1927 Ocean Street, Santa Cruz, (831) 426-1601

Playland-Not-at-the-Beach

If Pee-wee Herman and a Beetlejuice-era Tim Burton reimagined a seaside amusement park, it would look a lot like Playland-Not-at-the-Beach. You’ll need a map to navigate the 9,000-sq.-ft. mazelike space of ghastly freak show displays (Cobra Woman! Devil Boy!), boardwalk games with prizes, 30 vintage and contemporary pinball machines on free play, and a wonder world of miniature Halloween- and Christmas-themed villages. There's no food on-site, but staff will happily direct you to a nearby Wienerschnitzel for the full upset-stomach-at-the-fair experience. The facility is overseen by Fabulous Frank, whose office is dressed in Eartha Kitt memorabilia and dubbed “The Happiest Place on Eartha.”

10979 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito, (510) 592-3002

More Spirited Cemeteries

At Olivet Memorial Park, you can step right up to a Showfolks of America memorial that boldly mixes the acid-meets-base combo of clowns and graveyards. A huge granite monument depicts a clown and carnival scene with the inscription: “That They May Rest in Peace Among Their Own.” Fronting the memorial are rows of nondescript grave markers for performers who’ve gone to that bigger top in the sky.

1601 Hillside Blvd., Colma, (650) 755-0322

Just up the street is Pet’s Rest whose crematory displays a mural that supposedly depicts every type of animal the facility has cremated. I love the cat that stopped along the way to clean itself. The presence of flamingos left me skeptical and staff was unable to confirm whether they transitioned any of the pink birds.

1905 Hillside Blvd., Colma, (650) 755-2201

In Pescadero’s hillside cemetery, a chainsaw grave marker may prompt initial concern but it symbolizes what the individual loved, not how he perished.

690 Stage Rd., Pescadero

Glaum Egg Ranch Chicken Machine

Once you go to an automated-egg-vending-machine-with-animatronic-chicken-show, you’ll never go back. Marvin Glaum, the late proprietor of Glaum Egg Ranch, created numerous farm inventions during the 1950s, including an egg vending machine that visitors can still use today.

You insert four crisp dollar bills and out pops a flat of 19 fresh eggs. (No, there’s isn’t a person hiding behind the facade and physically handing them to you. I asked.) Simultaneously, a curtain lifts on an adjacent window that features a kick line of stuffed hens that bounce to a chickenized version of Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood.” You can view the two-minute spectacle here. Marvin’s daughter Sherrie makes the costumes and décor that change with the holidays.

3100 Valencia Rd., Aptos, (831) 688-3898

Libby Water Tower

Rising from a sea of staid business parks is this monumental can of Libby’s Fancy Fruit. It originally served as a water tower for Libby’s cannery and orchards that once stood on site. The factory’s long gone but the 150-ft. tower remains.

Today, workers from barrel-of-monkeys defense contractor Raytheon plod the campus seemingly unaware that there is a giant can of syrupy fruit hovering overhead. I asked if anyone had ghost cravings for cubed fruit or if the cafeteria whipped up any tributes, but no one was into it. (Now that I think about it, the tower probably hides a ballistic missile.) If it was my office park, I'd commission a Claes Oldenburg–sized can opener to sit immediately adjacent. 

The tower fronts 460 W. California Ave., Sunnyvale

The Alamo Menagerie

I had heard rumors of a menagerie of resin-cast animals in buttoned-up Alamo. To get confirmation and precise directions, I had to enter through a gift shop. Owners Richard and Teri Delfosse own an Alamo craft store and their statue-filled yard is a quick stroll from the shop. Elaborate jungle, farm, and desert scenes are clearly visible through wrought iron gates that face the Iron Horse Trail. It draws numerous onlookers and Richard and Terri clearly enjoy the attention it gets from young children — as opposed to the grown man that stood outside the gate every day for two weeks and, as Terri described, hopped like a bunny.

Park at Alamo Plaza Shopping Center in Alamo and walk northwest on Iron Horse Regional Trail (located behind the shopping center). After roughly 10 minutes, the menagerie will be on your left.

Doggie Diner Heads

It wouldn’t be a local roadside Americana list without the beloved Doggie Diner heads. The late Al Ross (an old-school businessman who, from the descriptions I heard, shared the temperament of The Jetsons' Cosmo Spacely) started the Bay Area hot dog chain in 1948. Having to compete with franchises like McDonald’s, Ross hired a Berkeley graphic artist to design the iconic bow-tied dachshund heads in 1966. Doggie Diner ceased operating in 1986, but you can see eight of the original 25-30 fiberglass heads at the following Northern California locales:

●      Sloat Blvd. at 45th Ave., San Francisco

●      888 H Street, Treasure Island, San Francisco (3 heads!)*

●      Bell Plastics (of course Bruce has one): 2020 National Ave., Hayward, (510) 784-1111

●      Streetlight Records, 980 So. Bascom Ave., San Jose, (888) 330-7776

●      Vino Noceto: 11011 Shenandoah Rd., Plymouth, (209) 245-6557

●      The Other Place: Boonville, (707) 895-3979

*Local aficionado John Law has three newly remodeled Doggie Diner heads on an 18-foot trailer that are losing their parking space. If you have a (free) replacement to offer, contact him at john@laughingsquid.com.

This is my list of great Northern California roadside attractions but you can find thousands more using Roadside America and Atlas Obscura as your guide.