Incredi-Bill: North Platte, Nebraska's Fort Cody Trading Post

Nothing warms the heart of a bored cross-country roadtrip passenger than a good, old-fashioned politically incorrect tourist trap. Such is the case of the Fort Cody Trading Post, just off Interstate 80 in North Platte, Nebraska. North Platte has a genuine claim to fame, as it was the 1880s home of William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody. Not exactly the stay home and collect stamps-type, he got his nickname for killing 4,280 buffalo in an 8-month period during 1867-68. There are lots of good reasons to stop and stretch your legs here: the "fort" is actually a western museum/wild-west-show-in-miniature/kitschy gift shop all housed in a mock stockade (mockade?) complete with soldier mannequins (one with an arrow tastefully stuck in his butt) and a corral out back that is home to a...drumroll, please...Muffler Man Indian! The western museum displays many authentic items, including chaps, guns, boots, spurs, stuffed animals, and some statues of Bill and various Indians. The piece de resistance, though, is a stuffed two-headed calf. The miniature west show is an accurate, if not tiny, diorama of Buffalo Bill's traveling extravaganza from the 1870s. Ernie and Virginia Palmquist carved the 20,000 figures --snake charmers, knife-throwers, fat ladies, cowpunchers, squaws, you name it -- that come to life every half hour in an animated show, free of charge. The gift shop features a glittering array of items to mark the occasion and remember your friends and loved ones by: iron dinner triangles ("Come an' gitit!"), books of western lore, taste-challenged T-shirts, edible bugs, stuffed jackalopes, candy cigarettes and more John Wayne paraphernalia than you can shake a stick at, Pilgrim. And if that's not enough, out back there's a corral with wagons, a tee pee, a buffalo and, yes, the famed 25-foot lantern-jawed brave, girning at you with Native American Muffler Man pride. Muffler Man aficionados will tell you this is a modified classic MM, not the official Indian classification, just so you know. However you categorize him he's awesome, and how.

So don't pass up the chance to see a real kitschy Americana treat the next time you're passing through central Nebraska. And the skies are not cloudy all day.

The lighter side of Little Big Horn and other Montana delights

You wouldn't think there'd be anything funny at Little Big Horn, but check out these names on the memorial wall... Plenty Lice? Chased By owls?

Little Big Horn is in southern Montana and it's location of the famous Indian battle. I always liked hearing about this battle as a kid because the Indians won for a change, and Custer, that pompous twit, got his just desserts. Unfortunately, this would be the last hurrah for the native peoples and the American west. Coming in from the west, the landscape is rolling hills and scraggly prairie. Wide, wide spaces with nothing on them except the occasional abandoned shack and grazing horses and cows. The sky really is big here in this state, just like they say. It's a roadside attraction in and of itself. People really say "howdy" here, too. I love that, when cliches earnestly come true before your eyes. One odd thing about Montana is the number of billboards addressing the meth abuse problem. I didn't even know they had a meth abuse problem, but apparently its so big they have to put up grotesquely graphic billboards (I should have a shot a picture of one, but never did). We passed a "facility" on the highway (a brand new concrete cinder block prison, actually) with a spray painted sign outside calling it the "Meth Motel". Gallows humor for sure. "Club Meth" would have been a little more clever, but I'm not going to quibble with the locals. We get to Little Big Horn and its a somber field with nondescript rolling hills, not the big canyons they had in the movies. Lots of markers where battling union soldiers and Indians met their untimely demise. One thing I wasn't expecting, though, was some unintentional levity in the form of some of the Indian names memorialized in stone: "Guts", "Chased By Owls" and my personal favorite "Plenty Lice". This really isn't the place for humor but I can't help it... funny is funny.