I’ve been avoiding it for years.

Tourist trap.

Souvenir shop lined streets and overcrowded fast food joints.

But when we had to take a trip there to pick up a vintage 50’s snow cone machine –

I couldn’t believe that we didn’t visit earlier.

The streets are lined with souvenir shops, yes.

But many of them have been open for over 50 years and a few even have new old stock inside

The main drag is dotted with hotels- but these aren’t your motel 6’s and holiday inns.

They are amazingly preserved time mid century time capsules.

We hit Paul Bunyon’s.

A mini gold course with a totem pole and (my fav) the blackhawk inn (which we discovered started out as one of the first tourist hotels-post WWII a series of railroad shacks were relocated to the main drag to accommodate soldiers.) Once the military was finished with them, they started renting them out for the growing tourist traffic. Over the course of the next 6 decades,