When Heather and Barry Thomas decided to commemorate their fifth wedding anniversary in 2011, they set out to do something a little out of the ordinary.
Rather than exchanging the traditional silverware or wooden gift, the Oklahoma-based couple traveled to a rural road between the nearby villages of Talala and Winganon with a crate of supplies. Their destination: a ditch holding an abandoned cement mixer said to have been too heavy to move after a crash in 1959. Through the decades, locals would decorate the large metal vessel with various motifs, often painted like an American flag. The Thomases had another idea, however, giving the mixer a shiny coat of silver paint, then adding the NASA logo along with hoses, mock rocket nozzles, and other implements to create the semblance of a downed space capsule, lost in the middle of an unlikely prairie.
The result is almost as convincing as it is entertaining, and the once-deserted piece of machinery has now become a must-see roadside attraction for thousands of visitors, complete with its own Facebook page.
You can find it at E 300 Rd, Talala, OK 74080.
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