It’s the last day of your trip and you realize you still haven’t purchased a souvenir. Hubby and I usually opt for a T-shirt, locally crafted Christmas ornament, or a refrigerator magnet featuring a local landmark. It doesn’t matter that the magnet won’t stick to our stainless-steel RV refrigerator. It’s the last day to get something. Anything!
You may laugh about a fridge magnet that ends up in our junk drawer. But, trust me, there are many, many other items that far outrank our unusable fridge magnets. These are the souvenirs classified as unusual. Or weird. Possibly trendy? But definitely strange. Read on and you’ll see what I mean.
Unusual trip souvenirs
Canned air. Yes, you read that correctly. It’s basically a sealed, empty can. While I’ve never purchased one, I can just imagine workers hauling a thousand cans up into the highest points of the Rocky Mountains to capture that brisk, clean, mountain air. Then they rush back down to the factory and seal in all that wonderful mountain goodness just so that we can pop open a can when we’re back home breathing everyday local air and crave a whiff of vacation. Good stuff!
Water or sand samples. Yes, folks pay to bring home a souvenir of water from the Great Lakes. Same goes for sand from one of Michigan’s wonderful beaches. Who came up with this idea? Probably a mom who was frustrated by continually finding wet swimsuits piled in the RV shower. Or someone who spent the better part of her vacation sweeping beach sand off the RV floors!
Money. I’m not talking colorful foreign money. If you visit the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington, D.C., you can actually purchase a full sheet of dollar bills. Or at least you could a few years ago. You may want to call ahead to be sure.
Official Cow Tipping Instructions are available in some Nebraska souvenir shops. No matter how little is charged for this pamphlet, in my opinion, it’s too much.
Voodoo dolls. Louisiana visitors can purchase their very own voodoo doll as a souvenir, along with “House Blessing Spray” and “Away All Evil Spirits” furniture polish.
Switchplate cover of Bangor, Maine. An aerial map of the city was printed on a universal light switch plate. Huh. Ok, well at least it’s usable.
Animal dung. (Yep. You just can’t make this stuff up!) In Texas, you can purchase an authentic “Cow Patty” to display on the entry table at home. You must admit it’s a sure-fire conversation starter and possibly a good way to get rid of solicitors.
My apologies to anyone who may have purchased one of these unusual souvenirs. I have to admit that I bought a Mickey Mouse hat once. I even wore it for a few pictures when we visited the Magic Kingdom. But here’s the thing about souvenirs. You take them home. And then what? It’s not like I’m going to wear the MM hat when I go grocery shopping, right? But I still smile when I come across that hat that I have stored in the deep recesses of our sticks ‘n bricks basement. And those fridge magnets? Well, it’s a fun surprise when I see one in the junk drawer! I’m immediately taken back to a vacation memory.
How about you? What’s the tackiest souvenir you’ve ever seen? Have you ever purchased a souvenir and regretted it once you returned home? Tell us about them in the comments below, please.
##RVT1034
Not RVing, but traveling internationally, I bring home brooms. It’s amazing how alike but different brooms are in different parts of the world. Twigs, straw, palm fronds, native grasses, with handles or no…they’re cheap & easy to find
We have a chunk of rock salt sitting on mantle. I couldn’t tell you how many of those that were laying around in the rock salt building at the Public Works central maintenance facility in our home town.
40 miles from our sticks and brick home is a Salt mine where you can buy such a 8oz treasure for $8.00 or buy a truckload for a just few bucks more. ???????
Alligator head from the glades. It is now a business card holder. Just reach in and get one.
Yipes!
Gail, what kind of stainless steel is your refrigerator door made of.? 460 and 302 are magnetic, 303 sorta does.
I’ll need to check. I’m not sure. Now you have me wondering…
I have yet to buy a useless souvenir. I go for clothing featuring the places I have visited. My favorite so far being a long sleeve T from Yosemite with graphics of a bear and the inscription, “The s’mores are calling and I must go.” And yes, I do wear them. No Mickey stuff, tho.
We take pictures of our adventures and create yearly calendars that capture the memories. We relive that special trip each changing month.
We also purchase stickers of the visited place and put them inside our cabinet doors throughout the RV. When we open a cabinet door we remember those adventures. Purchased patches will be sewn on a blanket for use in the winter. We just have to decide on a design.
Great ideas! Thanks for sharing.
On a trip to Niagara Falls, I saw small bottles, about the size of an airline liquor bottle, bearing a label with a nice drawing of the falls. Inside was water, billed as “water that survived the plunge over Niagara Falls.” $4.95. When I asked a clerk who in the world buys those, she replied, “Everybody. We can’t keep them in stock.”
As a special touch, you could buy a bottle with the contents tinted red, blue, green, or orange. The difference? This was “water that survived the plunge over Niagara Falls at night when the lights were on.”
Some clever entrepreneur apparently created a liquid Pet Rock and a fortune.
Years ago when I visited Australia, I brought home a couple of Kangaroo {bleeped} change purses.
bleeped: a part of the male Kangaroo necessary for manufacture of gametes. The bleeped word is the name for the outer skin of that organ. I hate when computers censor me, especially when not using slang or profanity, but perfectly descriptive language.
Oh…{bleeped}.
Oh…Skrottahm. Did it get through that time? I misspelled and capitalized it hoping the bot will think it’s a city in Norway.
Good job, Paul! Yep, the filter had no idea what you wrote. Certainly does look like a city in Scandinavia. 😆 Have a great day. 😀 –Diane at RVtravel.com
LOL
A place we visit has to be extremely memorable for DW to buy a souvenir. Thus, we have very few. Until I broke a coaster we had one more than at present. 🙁
We collect smashed pennies from the 50 cent machines.
We pick up a rock off the ground and bring home. I paint the name of the state or location and year on it and set it outside by our house. It brings back fond memories.
How cool! What a great idea! Small rocks, right?
Thinking about “The Long Long Trailer”?
Same here. Ours align with a walkway in the backyard. Unique by color or shape, fossil, metal or mineral, even drift wood out of the Pacific, and a beached adobe brick thought to come from a submerged lighthouse off the coast of Florida. This got started when I discovered a rock in the attic, along with a lot of old clothing, supposedly from Hitler’s fireplace, brought back by a WWII veteran. I have no way to confirm it but I suspect it is true. For me, it holds the best story in the whole yard.
In the visitor center at the Crazy Horse Memorial near Custer, SD (still under construction since 1948) there is — or was — a large crate filled with various sized stones blasted from the mountain, free for the taking.
Rocks from Antarctica. The tongue-in-cheek joke in the squadron was, “If everyone took a pound of rocks home from deployment after awhile there wouldn’t be any more of this place to deploy to and we could all go home.” 😉
When chaperoning a group of Junior Highers, I noticed that many of them had other plans that were not going to end well on our trip to Mackinac Island. I suggested to the teacher that we have a “Tacky Souvenir” contest. The rule was you could not spend more than $5. It helped the students get refocused and everyone enjoyed submitting their purchase. We had 3 top places, everyone voted for their favorites. Their were lots of laughs, the group enjoyed each other company and the field trip ended well.
Don’t have a tacky one to share, but the best one, hands down without question, was an Ulu knife from Alaska. Bought it in 2009 and have used it multiple times per week since!
Yep, so functional!
About 30 years ago we brought home Moose dropping earrings and moose dropping swizzle sticks. We bought them for a friend who was a science teacher. She wore the earrings to school and showed the kids the inappropriate way to use the swizzle stick. We knew she’d appreciate the souvenir. Sadly, she’s passed away, but she was by far the best science teacher I can remember my son having.
The tackiest souvenir that I have seen was a “{bleeped} bird”, a dried horse apple with a glued-on beak, googly eyes, a little feather on either side for wings, and pipe cleaner legs mounted on a small wooden base. Didn’t buy it, can’t even remember where I saw it. My favorites are, handmade crafts, magnets, occasionally a mug.
Our “fridge magnets” ride on the stove top cover!
Oooh! Nice idea. Thanks!
A friend of my Dad’s used to get sheets of bills. When he would pay the bill he would pull out a sheet, ask to borrow a pair of scissors, to cut out enough to cover the charge. Several times the cops came to ask about the bills.
In our 60 years of traveling, RV and otherwise, we have gathered a lot of “stuff” which in our later years provide many moments of fond recollections. We never consider this “stuff” to be souvenirs but rather “memory joggers”, probably no difference. Early in our travels we gathered posters and amatuer artwork from street vendors to recall special places and events. They were affordable and mostly easy to transport. They now are in every room of our house to constantly remind us of how fortunate we have been.
It is really a blessing to have traveled, and also to have reminders of our journeys.
For a while I collected bottles of sand from beaches we have been to. I stopped when I ran out of matching bottles (at three dozen). The interesting thing is, no two bottles of sand are alike.It is amazing how many different kinds of sand there are.
Not totally tacky. We went to Big Bend National Park a number of years ago. Took a hike to the Rio Grande River. There was a man, Victor, selling handmade items. There was also a man sitting across the river on a hillside, with binoculars. Scouting. This was post 9/11 & things were different, evidently. Used to be small boats that would ferry tourists across the river into Mexico where there was a small town. We ended up buying 2 items. One, a scorpion made out of thick gauge wire/cable. Actually it’s pretty cool. It sits on our dash. Also, a lacquered/painted flat rock with the town name on it, which we use as a doorstop for our front door (we live in a 120 year old Victorian). Both remind us of our trip to the Big Bend area, which we really enjoyed.
Love it! Thanks for sharing.
The items are all still lied out on the ground, Nobody there selling, just a locked tube to put your money in. We were surprised to see all the colorful wares for sale. We were disappointed, the boats were not running the day we were there. Big Bend is a beautiful park. It should be on everybody’s to do list.