CNN - "Fun Along the Road: American Tourist Attractions,"

(CNN) -- John Margolies has spent at least 25 years cruising the highways of the lower 48 states, his camera in hand and his wit somewhere else. Margolies has managed to print several art books consisting of texts and photographs of miniature golf courses, old gas stations, road signs and movie houses.

His latest, "Fun Along the Road: American Tourist Attractions", celebrates Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, alligator farms, Parrot Jungle and Santa's villages, in all their tacky glory.

In the ancient days before interstates, these monuments to grass roots capitalism sprang up like wild flowers along the highways of America. Many now are gone, but not forgotten.

Margolies recently spoke with CNN anchors Marina Kolbe and Bobbie Battista about "Fun Along the Road" and the thrill of roadside attractions.

CNN ANCHOR MARINA KOLBE: Welcome John. So, are they all gone? Are there still some around?

MARGOLIES: There are still plenty of tourist attractions around, if one should care to stop at them, and I've stopped at loads and loads of them along the way.

Flip through a few roadside attractions!
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CNN ANGHOR BOBBIE BATTISTA: You've been at this for a long time, John, so I'm just curious as to how you decided which will go in the book. Because I did note that the Corn Palace, in Mitchell, South Dakota, did not make the book.

MARGOLIES: Well, there's a souvenir for the Corn Palace in the book, but it's just a question that there's more fun to be had along the road than I could put in the book, and some very great stuff didn't make it and some very great stuff did. The Corn Palace is absolutely an extraordinary monument.

KOLBE: How did you chose the book cover? It must have been a tough decision.

MARGOLIES: Well, that's a pretty great Paul Bunyan and it just was a question of what fit, what jumped out. It's hard to say "roadside attraction" with one image, so in fact there are four images on the cover and there are four images on the back because there's such a great diversity of roadside attractions to be enjoyed.

BATTISTA: Let's take a trip then. Wall Drug is the first one we're going to look at, and I actually had the pleasure of being here as well, because if you drive basically from the Midwest toward Wyoming, you're going to hit the Corn Palace and all these signs for Wall Drug.

MARGOLIES: Billboards are really among the most important features of a roadside attraction because they want to tempt you and tempt you and tempt you, and when you finally get off the interstate to go to Wall Drug, you see this really enormous billboard that's animated, and if you've come from the east, you've seen the 80-foot dinosaur and then you go straight to Wall Drug, which was a little drug store that became Wall, South Dakota.

BATTISTA: And, I might add, you can still find the original little drug store right in the middle of this complex of stuff that's grown up around it.

MARGOLIES: They're the only drug store within a 6,000 square mile area in South Dakota, although there are a whole lot of other things to do there.

KOLBE: But that's a highlight. What about Babe and Tall Paul? Is that still around?

MARGOLIES: Well, the one in Minnesota is and the one on the cover, which is in Spruce, Michigan, is still there. Paul Bunyan is a very American folk hero just full of blarney and nonsense, and he and Babe turn up all over the place.

BATTISTA: All right, where is the Land of Make Believe? Is that the one in Cape Cod or not?

MARGOLIES: The Land of Make Believe -- well, there was a Story Land in Cape Cod, the Land of Make Believe was in ... New York in the Adirondacks and ... a stage designer and toymaker built his dream and opened it in 1953. What he didn't know is he was building it on the flood plain of the Ausable River.

BATTISTA: Oops.

MARGOLIES: And after 13 floods, he finally closed it down ...

BATTISTA: Got the message?

MARGOLIES: ... in 1979. It now stands in high decay in his backyard.

BATTISTA: Oh, that's too bad, because what a kid's dream come true.

MARGOLIES: It was.

KOLBE: A Thousand Animal Zoo, what about that one?

MARGOLIES: That was a man named James Sterling who came back to the Adirondacks after visiting Alaska and started raising animals to make fur coats out of, and he discovered that the people were every bit as interested in the animals as they were in the fur coats. So he assembled a zoo, and it went strong. He died in the early '60s and his wife kept it going until the middle '70s. The Land of a Thousand Animals is no more, although the building is still there.

BATTISTA: What a shame. Speaking of animals, (what about) Bear Boy and Bear Man?

MARGOLIES: That's Murray Clark at Clark's Trading Post in North Woodstock, New Hampshire. Murray's father Ed Clark visited Labrador, Newfoundland, in 1928 and brought some sled dogs back to the White Mountains of New Hampshire and started a sled dog ranch, giving tourists sled dog rides. And then they got some bears from up the road and in the late '40s, Murray and his brother Ed Jr. started training them, and even today, maybe even as we speak -- there's Murray at age 70. They give three or four of the most fabulous bear shows I've ever seen. Of course, it's the only one I've ever seen, but the Clark's are a family-owned business of great distinction and their tourist attraction is a joy to behold.

KOLBE: Off to another animal. Some people go to the coast to see whales, but you can see some whales right on the road.

MARGOLIES: This is a whale on Route 66 in Catoousa, Oklahoma, which is right near Tulsa, and it was a place to take a swim or to have a picnic, and there was an ark building right next door to it as well.

BATTISTA: You know, these places are so tacky and they're so cheesy, but they're so wonderful in relation to what we see now going down the highways, and I notice that Burma Shave was bringing back their old way of advertising, and South of Border is still there. Do you think we'll ever return to some of these types of attractions?

MARGOLIES: Well, first, let me say that tacky and cheesy doesn't necessarily mean bad, because if you like it ... we're both right. I think these attractions will continue to exist in smaller numbers by the interstates. South of the Border is right by the interstate as you cross the North Carolina border into South Carolina, and there are many, many others.

BATTISTA: And I remember passing that when I was a kid on the way to Florida, when it was just this ramshackle fireworks building. That's all it was...

MARGOLIES: It started as a beer stand.

KOLBE: And that's exactly what's wonderful about these. Kids love them and for parents it's such a -- wow, (it's) something the kid will stop whining and then they can talk about it. The next one we have (is) the big Putt Putt.

MARGOLIES: Well, Putt Putt is a registered trademark, but miniature golf has been a rage in the United States since 1930. In California, they started off in the '30s by building them and it became a craze like goldfish-swallowing and marathon dancing. But then, unlike those fads, it didn't go away ...

KOLBE: We've run out of time, John, unfortunately, so we didn't get to the Coral Castles which was my favorite because it was a man who had built it in devotion to the fiancee that had jilted him ...

BATTISTA: John Margolies, thanks very much for joining us.