Photo Illustration by Rich-Joseph Facun/THE POST

Hordes of tanned, swimsuit-clad people, hot sun, drunken beach parties - to some this sounds like a perfect spring break. To others it sounds like a nightmare - not to mention unoriginal. We at Access believe in creativity in all things, including vacations. After all, why hit the beach, when you can hit the road?

The United States is dotted by thousands of bizarre roadside attractions and is home to dozens of tour operators offering guided excursions into all sorts of weirdness. Before you pack up your sunblock, take a look into these alternative spring break destinations.

Size is important

Many towns claim fame by being home to the world's biggest something. Usually these outsized objects are just off the road, and the "curator" of the attraction is someone you'd be likely to shy away from in the BMV.

Weird Al immortalized it in song - the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota is actually the biggest ball of twine in the world. Weighing 17,400 pounds and measuring 12 feet in diameter, the stringy sphere can be found in Darwin, Minn.

Roanoke, Va., is home to the Mill Mountain Star, the world's largest free-standing, neon-illuminated star. It glows in blue and is 88 1/2 feet tall.

If you see the star, drive a few miles and hit Roanoke's other tourist trap - a miniature Graceland. A full reproduction of Elvis Presley's home, this-mini mansion shares a front yard with a reproduction of the Presley family's Tupelo, Miss., home.

Huge reproductions of wildlife are favorites throughout the nation. Visitors to New Salem, N.D., can take a gander at Salem Sue. At 38 feet tall, Sue is the world's largest cow. North Dakota also boasts the world's largest buffalo - it can be found in Jamestown.

Prehistory is scary

Speaking of big animals, some of the biggest and tackiest can be found in dinosaur parks. These "zoos," showcasing concrete replicas of prehistoric reptiles, can still be found at obscure highway intersections.

Dinosaur Land in White Post, Va., isn't too far out of the way for those travelling to the South. The park features 35 exhibits, including King Kong, a giant octopus, an enormous shark and the traditional dinos.

Michigan is home to the most disturbing dinosaur park, Dinosaur Gardens Prehistoric Zoo. The park combines dinos, cavemen and Christianity. A statue of Jesus greets visitors at the entrance. Later, tourists are invited to climb into an aptosaurus' body and witness "The Greatest Heart," a representation of Christ, enthroned in a heart, in the middle of the beast's chest.

Life is a bizarre museum

When one thinks of museums, images of artistic masterpieces and historic artifacts protected by velvet ropes might come to mind. But high culture and sociology are not the only subjects to which museums have been devoted.

Travelers to Minneapolis, Minn., can visit the Museum of Questionable Medical Devices. The museum is devoted to quackery in many forms but leans heavily toward objects likely to give viewers an electrical shock, or at least make them blush.

Heading south, one can find the Oscar Getz Museum of Whiskey History in Corbin, Ky. The museum's collection of memorabilia has been culled from over 500 years of whiskey distilling.

Independence, Mo., is home to the Hair Museum, an institution devoted to the preservation of decorative and practical objects made of hair.

The weirdest museum of all, the Carrolltown, Md., Museum of Menstruation, a collection of historic feminine hygiene devices, has been closed pending relocation.

This place is just weird

Some attractions defy categorization. These places cause visitors to scratch their heads and ponder the motives of the people who created them.

One such creation is in Alliance, Neb. Built in 1987, Carhenge, is a life-size replica of Stonehenge made entirely of cars, has gained fame as one of America oddest roadside attractions.

Another famous and odd attraction is Wall Drug Store in Wall, S.D. Originally an average general store, the shop built its empire on a promise: All visitors get free cups of ice water. From those cups, a monolith has grown. Wall Drug is a huge emporium of all things tacky. The store features sections selling Western art and clothing, a donut factory, cheesy souvenirs of all sorts and a huge collection of Jackalope merchandise.

This town is tacky

Usually the term "tacky" applies to individual attractions, but occasionally an entire city revels in being gauche.

Two of the tackiest American towns are nestled at the Eastern entrance to the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge, Tenn., are among the most shameless tourist traps in the country and home to such attractions as the Elvis Presley Museum and the Hillbilly Village and Gift Shop. Tucked between the two towns is Dollywood, Dolly Parton's amusement park.

Michigan also boasts a tacky town offering a cheap take on Old World ambience.

Frankenmuth is Michigan's little Bavaria. This German-themed town is full of quaint Alpine architecture, beer gardens (complete with St. Pauli Girl-esque waitresses) and fudge, taffy and ice cream shops. Frankenmuth is also home to Bronner's CHRISTmas Wonderland, the world's largest Christmas store. Open all year, Bronner's offers more holiday merchandise than Santa could shake a jingle bell at.

The truth is out there

Some of us aren't content to visit roadside oddities. We want our vacations to take us into unexplored depths of oddness and mystery.

Luckily for Mulder and Scully types, many tour operators offer "X-peditions."

Roswell, N.M., is the Mecca of alien obsession. It was there in 1947 that a UFO supposedly crashed and started the whole flying saucer paranoia phenomena. Several tour operators in Roswell offer packages to would-be alien hunters, taking visitors to the crash site, offering them a chance to interview witnesses and dropping them at the International UFO Museum and Research Center.

Similar tours area available in Rachel, Nev., home of the U.S. Air Force installation known as Area 51 and rumored to house downed UFOs.

If aliens aren't your thing, there's always Bigfoot. Although no tour operators offer Sasquatch-seeking excursions in the Pacific Northwest, many Bigfoot research organizations will gladly tell you where to look and detail the type of equipment you need to track the elusive ape-man.

These are dozens of other shrines to American curiosity, ingenuity and tastelessness out there, from Graceland to Ripley's Believe It or Not's various museums. If you're interested in checking out some of these destinations look no further than Roadside America, www.roadsideamerica.com, a Web site run by the authors of a book by the same name. The site is devoted, as the authors put it, to offbeat attractions - we couldn't have put it better.