World's Largest Prairie Chicken
We simply didn't get enough big stuff on the 4th. We stayed at my parents' place the night of the 4th and headed back to the Twin Cities on the 5th. We took a little detour, through a lake actually (County 24 was just a little bit under water east of Rothsay), to get to the prairie chicken.
In 1975, Rothsay named itself the Prairie Chicken Capital of Minnesota and the prairie chicken statue was built in 1976. The terrain around Rothsay is lots of flat prairie and farm fields, a great environment for the prairie chicken. It was built out of cement by Art Fosse and Dale Western and it depicts the bird's unique mating ritual, called booming. The prairie chicken is 13 feet tall and 18 feet from tip to tail. There are displays around the prairie chicken where you can learn more about these birds.
Giant Adirondack Chair
It's another new one!
The chair was built in 2002, but it is not the original chair. The first giant green adirondack chair fell victim to weather due to untreated materials. It was built in 1995 as a way to produce publicity for the Green Chair Project.
The Green Chair Project began in 1991 by Joel Sisson and Chris Hand after two lawn chairs were stolen from their backyard. With the help of kids from this rough neighborhood, they built 90 green adirondack chairs that they gave to everyone in the neighborhood.
You can find out more about the Green Chair Project at these links:
http://curtprins.com/pro_bono/greenchair.org/history.html
http://www.fortroadfederation.org/highbridge/greench.htm
This may be the world's largest adirondack chair, but I don't know for sure. There is also a giant green adirondack chair from the Green Chair Project in Washington D.C.
Thanks to
Mykl Roventine for helping me find the chair and to
Agilitynut for the information on the Green Chair Project.
Bongards Cow
About 12 miles west of the outermost Minneapolis suburbs on Highway 212 is the tiny town of Bongards. The town basically consists of
Bongards' Creameries, a church, a house or two, and a giant holstein cow. The cow is directly across the street from the cheese store, as if you couldn't find it anyway.
There seems to be a number of cows exactly like this one scattered across Wisconsin, but this is the only one in Minnesota. The world's largest is
Salem Sue in New Salem, ND.
Tip: Go sometime when the cheese store is open. We were there on a Sunday evening and it was closed. I'm willing to bet that they have tasty cheese.
World's Largest Turkey
That's right, it's the day after Thanksgiving and we are at the World's Largest Turkey, Big Tom. We were back up to my neck of the woods for the holiday and we took the opportunity to go to another nearby town to see another giant bird. What better way to celebrate Thanksgiving than to visit a gigantic turkey? Well, eating turkey I suppose.....and stuffing and potatoes and lefse (I'm Norwegian).
Cooking a turkey isn't an easy thing to do. Butterball knows this. That's why they setup the turkey hotline. And I bet if you call the turkey hotline, they would advise against using a blowtorch as a cooking method to prepare your bird. It's just too bad that a couple of maintenance workers in Frazee didn't give Butterball a call.
On July 1, 1998 a pair of maintenance workers were working on removing Big Tom to make room for his replacement (Tom was slated for replacement due to frequent repairs) and accidentally hit his insulation with a blowtorch and within seconds their goose was cooked, or turkey I guess.
After the fire, a small egg statue was placed where the new Big Tom would stand and for the first time in 12 years, the Turkey Capital of the World had to celebrate their Turkey Days festival without Big Tom. The new Big Tom is even bigger and Tommier than the original. He now stands at 22 feet tall and weighs over 5000 pounds.
World's Largest Polar Bear
From North St. Paul we head north to White Bear Lake and the World's Largest Polar Bear. The polar bear was built out of fiberglass in 1964 by Gordon Shumaker for a local car dealership. In 1989, Polar Chevrolet opened it's new dealership and mounted the bear on top of it's new building.
The polar bear has sustained a long, and apparently successful, 43-year career in marketing. He's still selling cars and still kind of smiling about it.
White Bear Lake was named after a local Native American legend about a white ghost bear living on an island in a nearby lake.
Tip: It is on a car dealership so if you show up on their lot while they are open, a dealer will find you. If you don't want to be hassled by a salesman, then you may want to either show up after hours or try to take a shot from the other side of the road to the south. You may need a little bit of a zoom lens for that, however. Although, the salesman will tell you about the bear if you tell them that you are there for the bear and not the cars.
World's Largest Snowman
I took the day off from work and the wife and I spent the day driving around the Twin Cities looking for a big stuff or three. We started by going to North St. Paul and tracking down the World's Largest Snowman.
The snowman was built in 1974 out of concrete stucco and is 54 feet tall. According to a tipster at RoadsideAmerica.com, the North St. Paul Jaycees used to build a snowman each year at the same intersection for it's Sno-Daze celebration. After a couple of winters with some lean snowfalls, they decided to build this one of cement. Take that, Mother Nature!
The snowman was somewhat recently repainted to appear as if he was wearing a
Bret Hedican jersey. He used to have a much more traditional paint job. Hedican was born in St. Paul and went to high school in North St. Paul. He went on to play in the NHL and last year won the Stanley Cup as a member of the Carolina Hurricanes.
World’s Largest Revolver
The Pfeifer Zeliska is the largest revolver in the world according to Guiness Records, a copy of the Remington model 1855 it is around 1850mm long.
World's Largest Otter
After seeing Big Ole in Alexandria, we had one more stop before we hit the lake. That was Adams Park in Fergus Falls to see the World's Largest Otter. The otter is 40 feet long and was built to honor Ottertail County, where Fergus Falls is the county seat. The otter is also the high school mascot.
The world largest rat
