We drove two hours to see butterflies and this thing just happened to be on the way.
It's called a Futuro. It's a house, if you can believe that, designed by a man in Finland in the 60s. Less than a hundred were made.
Our intended destination was The Butterfly House west of St. Louis, but an hour into that trip the youngest person in our family decided she'd had enough of the car.
So Fate gave us a reason to stop: gaudy roadside attractions along I-55 at Exit 37 in Livingston, IL. Here, the Pink Elephant Antique Mall displays some of the quirkiest examples of Americana to draw in customers for their wares. (In our case, we were drawn to the Twisty Treat Ice Cream also on location.)
No need to write at length on these monuments, the likes of which inspire writers of newspaper columns, magazines and blogs. We summer road-tripping Americans love our kitsch.
And we did, eventually, see our butterlies.
