Road Trip!

Now that Mike and Tammy are relocating to Raleigh, North Carolina, it's time to start planning a new road trip. We have done two road trips to Portland, Oregon while they have been living there, hitting all the major scenic hot spots like Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone National Park, and the Corn Palace (look it up - it's pretty cool) in Mitchell, South Dakota. We have also spent some time (and money) in Reno and driven through the Bonneville Salt Flats of Utah. We have one last trip to Portland planned for Mike's graduation, but unfortunately we're flying out because of time issues. It will be sad to say goodbye to Portland - we really like the area and it's close to my brother and sister-in-law - but now we are planning a trip east to the Atlantic. Well, not right now. Now we are getting excited about Nate and Dana's wedding this summer in Chicago. But when we do plan to head east, we already have one destination picked out.  

When we were vacationing in St. Louis many years ago with the Lighthalls and the Robinsons, I picked up a sign that I kept on my desk at school for twenty years. It read "No one gets in to see the wizard! Not no one, not no how!" It is a manifestation of my enjoyment of all things Ozian. I loved watching the Wizard of Oz movie when I was younger. Back in those pre-cable days, it ran on CBS exactly once a year. There were no recorders so if you wanted to see it, you had to be planted in front of the TV while it ran. You couldn't buy it from Amazon or even in the video store - neither of those existed in 1960. It was definitely "must-watch" TV. I read some of the original books when I was growing up, then bought the collection for my Kindle and have been working my way through it again. There used to be a Wizard of Oz Museum north of Valparaiso, Indiana, on our way to Ohio, but it closed a few years ago.  

I was excited, then, to find that west of Raleigh, North Carolina, on Beech Mountain, there is an abandoned Wizard of Oz theme park. I first read about it on Roadtrippers, which is my go-to road trip app. The Land of Oz was opened in 1970 with the intention of keeping the ski lodge employees working during the summer months (it's up in the mountains). It got 20,000 visitors a day at first, but fell victim to a fire in 1976 which destroyed some of the Oz memorabilia, then closed in 1980. Several years later, the theme park opened for one weekend only to allow former employees a chance to get together again. October 5th of this year is the 20th year of the "Autumn at Oz" celebration. The rest of the year the park is closed.  

But there is a loophole. Tucked away on the grounds of The Land of Oz is a house built to model Dorothy Gale's house in Kansas and it is for rent year round. For $165 a weeknight, you have access to the grounds of the theme park. 

And even though the park is in bad shape, there are still lots of things to see. So, sometime in the next year, "We're off to see the Wizard, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz." I just hope it can live up to the splendor and awesomeness of the Corn Palace.