Gas Money, Gift Shops, and One Enormous Basket: Our Completely Unscientific Roadside Ranking Road Trip

There are two types of people: those who drive past the World's Largest something and those who pull over. This article is for the second type, and also for the first type who secretly want to convert.

Last month, three of us from the OH Wa FG crew loaded into a Corolla with a cooler, a tripod, and a scoring rubric we invented at 6 a.m. at a Pilot station. Each attraction got rated 1–10 in three categories: Photo Potential (how good does your uncle's Facebook post look), Detour-Worthiness (is it worth exiting the highway), and Gift Shop Quality (self-explanatory, deeply important).

The Contenders, Ranked Worst to First

5. The World's Largest Horserace Trophy, various claims, near Cincinnati — Look, it's a big trophy. It's a very big trophy. But you can't get close to it, the lighting is hostile, and there's no gift shop to speak of. Photo Potential: 4. Detour: 3. Gift Shop: 2. Total: 9/30.

4. The Twine Ball Contender, somewhere off US-23 — Ohio has a twine ball situation, and we're not here to settle the Kansas dispute. Ours is modest but charming, with a hand-painted sign and a donation jar that funds the sign's upkeep, which we respect enormously. Photo Potential: 6. Detour: 7. Gift Shop: 3 (it's a jar). Total: 16/30.

3. The Giant Pencil, Toledo area — A sculpture, technically, but at 76 feet it earns its stripes. Great angle options, excellent silhouette shots at golden hour, and a surprisingly good antique mall two minutes away. Photo: 7. Detour: 8. Gift Shop: 6 (credit the antique mall). Total: 21/30.

2. Johnny Appleseed's Oversized Everything, Mansfield — Mansfield doesn't do anything small. The bronze-and-granite tributes, the towering apple statue, the general commitment to the bit — it all adds up. Photo: 8. Detour: 9. Gift Shop: 7. Total: 24/30.

1. The World's Largest Basket, Newark — I mean. Look at it. The Longaberger headquarters basket is a seven-story picnic basket shaped like itself, and it is, without competition, the most photographable building in the Midwest. It's also empty, which somehow makes it better — a monument to ambition, abandoned but immaculate. Photo: 10. Detour: 10. Gift Shop: 4 (there isn't one, which honestly fits). Total: 24/30 — but we gave it the crown on a tiebreaker we invented called "Vibes."

Steal Our Itinerary

Want to run this route yourself? Here's the Saturday plan that worked for us:

• 7:00 a.m. — Leave Columbus. Coffee in the cupholder, rubric on the dash.
• 9:30 a.m. — Newark. The Basket. Take 400 photos. Take 40 more.
• 11:30 a.m. — Mansfield. Lunch, apples, statues.
• 2:00 p.m. — Toledo. The Pencil. Golden-hour practice shots.
• 5:00 p.m. — Twine Ball. Donate to the jar. Sign the guest book. It's a real guest book.

Print it, laminate it, argue about the rankings in the car. That's the whole point.

You Be the Judge

Think we got it wrong? Think the Pencil got robbed? Drop your pick in the reader poll on our community board, and if you've got a candidate we missed — an oversized anything, anywhere in the 614 through the 419 — send us coordinates. We'll drive out, we'll score it, and we'll probably buy the jerky.

The Corolla's gassed up. It always is.