All it's quacked up to be: The rubber duck pharmacy of Cambria Village, California

You'll find some other great sights to see in Cambria Village...

Fifteen miles north of Cambria, the North Elephant Seal rookery, where tubby seals come to sunbathe undisturbed, is not to be missed...

...along with Nitt Witt Ridge (although, truth be told, we never made it here. You can read more about it here, though)

Halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles on California's stunningly beautiful central Pacific coast highway sits the rugged seaside tourist hamlet of Cambria. It's six miles from Hearst Castle, an awesome place we've blogged about previously and in Cambria Village, you'll find the Cambria Village Pharmacy, where, among the Band-Aids, foot powder and Calamine lotion, reside over 400 variations of rubber ducks. Plain yellow, black leather jacketed, glow in the dark, or celebrity-themed, they're everywhere, waiting to be purchased and floated in a tub near you. According to store manager Loren Empey (in this Trazzler article from 2009), the ducks began about a decade ago as an ordering mistake and now occupy half the store, making the pharmacy one of the world's foremost suppliers of the little yellow guys and all their peripheral gear.

So you might say they really have all their ducks in a row in Cambria. Waddle they think of next?

Unfortunately named business of the week

"I've got your test results back from the lab, Mr. Johnson, and it's what I've suspected all along: you have Advanced Gas."

The lay of the land: Greetings from Intercourse, Pennsylvania

For a group of hard-working and seemingly humorless religious devotees, the Amish have a knack for giving their Pennsylvania Dutchland towns some hilariously eccentric names. Blue Ball, Bird In Hand, Lititz, Bareville, Mount Joy, Fertility...stop it, Isaac, you're killin' me! For sheer immature giggles, though, you'd be, er, hard pressed to top Intercourse. The town was originally known as Cross Keys, but at some point around 1814 the name was changed to Intercourse, most likely referring to the intersection of the two main roads through town. The Amish also used the word to mean fellowship, which has a nice friendly ring to it. Little did they know, or perhaps they did, that they were turning their earnest humble berg into the double-entendre capital of the world. Gift shops overflow with "I Heart Intercourse" merchandise and what tourist wouldn't want to remember friends and loved-ones with such tasteful and elegant souvenirs.

So with apologies to anyone with good taste, here goes the obligatory bad pun tag ending: Next time you find yourself among the upstanding members of the Amish country, pay a coitusy call and hump it over to Intercourse where you'll get the most bang for your buck. Cigarette?

Welcome to the machine: San Francisco's Musee Mecanique

Among the busy seafood restaurants, gift shops and tourist trolley and boatriding kiosks of San Francisco's Pier 45 sits a warehouse full of one of the world's largest privately owned collections of mechanically operated musical instruments and antique arcade museums. The Musee Mecanique is Mr. Edward Galland Zelinsky's astounding collection of over 300 items, dating back about 100 years, including coin operated pianos, antique slot machines, animations and instruments (there's lots more about Mr. Zelinsky here). Want your fortune told? Take that up with Grandma, the Gypsy Fortune Teller. Think you're pretty strong? Challenge the Arm Wrestler. Amorous? Put your libido to the test with the Kiss-O-Meter. The Musee, with its grotesque characters and old, old school entertainment, is like stepping into the movies "Hugo" and "Pee Wee's Big Adventure," not to mention a "Twilight Zone" or two. The warehouse is also a tribute to the Playland At The Beach amusement park, San Francisco's beloved seaside version of Coney Island, popular from the 1920s until it closed in the 1960s.

Be sure to check out these marvels of yesteryear if you're ever in San Francisco, where it's free to get in and you can party like it's 1909.

Poultry in motion: The Rhode Island Red monument of Adamsville, Rhode Island

Minnesota has its loon, Rhode Island has its chicken.

Just down the road, Gray's General Store bills itself as the oldest general store in the U.S. ...

...and they've got the sign to prove it.

It's a fun place to poke around...

...for the smoker and non-smoker alike.

At the nearby F.A. Simmons store they've got more necessities...

...and if you're real nice they might play their organ for you.

There's a Rhode Island Reds baseball team in Rhode Island. Here's what their website has to say about it: The R.I. Reds U-12 AAU baseball team, with several area boys on the team, recently captured the U-12 AAU New England AAU Super Regional Baseball Tournament in Massachusetts.

There was a hockey team in Rhode Island based on the Rhode Island Red until the early '70s, too. I guess if you've got a chicken for a mascot, you should make sure it's a mean-looking one.

The Rhode Island Red even made its way into the dialog of the classic 1948 Warner Bros. cartoon "The Foghorn Leghorn":

Foghorn Leghorn: Looka’here son, I say son! Did ya see that hawk after those hens? He scared ‘em! That Rhode Island red turned white… then blue. Rhode Island. Red, white and blue. That’s a joke son! A flag waver! You’re built too low! The fast ones go over your head. You got a hole in your glove. I keep pitchin’ ‘em and you keep missin’ ‘em. You gotta keep your eye on the ball! Eye. Ball. Eyeball! I almost hadda gag, son! Joke that is.

My adopted home state of Rhode Island is quirky with a capital K. Case in point: the state bird is a chicken. But not just any chicken, mind you, but the pullet named for its heritage and hue, the Rhode Island Red. The RIR was first bred near the village of Adamsville in the town of Little Compton in the 1850s. The breed came perilously close to being known as the Massachusetts Red, though, because the Mass. state line is only a few hundred feet to the east. In 1925, the Rhode Island Red Club of America saw fit to mark this notable occasion with a plaque mounted on a rock by a ball field in Adamsville. On it, the following words are inscribed: "Red fowls were bred extensively by the farmers of this district and later named Rhode Island Reds and brought into national prominence by the poultry fanciers." In 2001, the sculpture was added to the National Register of Historic Places, one assumes, after 76 years of lobbying. Just down the road is another treat for eccentric roadside attraction fans: a business that bills itself as "America's Oldest General Store." Gray's Store, built in 1788, is a fun stop for a bit of this and a bit of that and a little bit further down the road in nearby Tiverton is its whippersnapper rival: F.A. Simmonds, in business since 1890, complete with Hammond Organ.

So, don't cry foul. Wing your way over to Adamsville and see why the chicken crossed the Rhode. That’s a joke son! A flag waver! You’re built too low!