Somebody over at MSN put together a list of 25 oversized roadside attractions scattered across the country, and I'll tell you what, it reads like a treasure map for folks like us. Giant elephants. Dinosaurs big enough to see from two exits away. The kind of stuff that made family road trips worth taking back when the biggest screen in the car was the windshield.

I've always had a soft spot for these things. Growing up in southern Missouri, you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting some giant fiberglass something-or-other along the highway. A big cow outside the dairy. A whale in a pond a hundred miles from any ocean, which never made a lick of sense and nobody cared. Those landmarks were how you knew where you were before GPS told you everything and ruined the fun.

That's what I love about a list like this. It's not that the attractions are good, exactly. A 60-foot dinosaur isn't competing with the Grand Canyon. It's the pull of the exit ramp. You've been driving four hours, your knee's stiff, the kids are squabbling, and out of nowhere there's a giant roadside statue daring you to keep going. You stop. You stretch. You take the picture. Twenty minutes later you're back on the road and everybody's in a better mood somehow. I reckon that's worth more than any fuel additive on the market.

The MSN piece covers the whole map, giant elephants to massive dinosaurs and everything in between, and it's worth clicking through if you're mapping a fall route. Pair it with a couple of the small towns I've written about lately and you've got yourself a proper trip. Hit an antique shop in the morning, a giant roadside whatever at lunch, a diner with bottomless coffee for supper. That's a day.

My advice if you go: don't plan it too tight. The best stops are the ones you didn't know about until you saw the billboard 12 miles out. Give yourself the slack to pull over. A road trip where you can't stop for a giant elephant isn't much of a road trip, it's just driving.

I've already got my Ozarks camping trip on the books for this fall, and I might just route it past one or two of these monsters myself. Lord knows those hills hide more than a few oversized landmarks of their own. Some of them half-forgotten, paint peeling, still standing guard out front of a business that closed years back. Those are my favorites, I'll admit it. A dinosaur with a faded paint job beats a shiny new one every time.

Go take a look at the list, pick out two or three within a tank's drive, and build a Saturday around them. And if you pass a giant anything on a back road here in Missouri, there's a fair chance I've driven past it too.