Summer road trips: There's some weird stuff to see in South Carolina

South Carolina has a few tourist attractions that defy categorization — or, really, in some cases, explanation.

They certainly make our state unique, to put it kindly.

It’s worth adding a few minutes to detour to see them. Some you can drive by without stopping. Or stop, stretch your legs and snap a photo.

After all, how many people can say they posed beside a 20-foot peanut, a 15-foot mason jar or a peach with a 60-foot-long, 7-ton leaf?

World’s Largest Boiled Peanut

(152 miles; 2 hours, 30 minutes.)

The boiled peanut is South Carolina's official state snack (yes, that's a thing), so of course South Carolina is going to have the world’s largest boiled peanut.In 2013, Bluffton unveiled it’s 20-foot-long boiled peanut, now a focal point at the annual Bluffton Boiled Peanut Festival.

This year's festival starts at 3 p.m. Saturday, June 30, and includes live entertainment, craft beer, a boiled peanut cookoff, a boiled peanut-eating contest, the Miss Peanut and Lil Mr. Goober pageants and a fireworks extravaganza. The festival is at Bluffton Oyster Factory Park, 63 Wharf St., Bluffton.

Made of pine studs, plywood, chicken wire, standard and spray foam insulation, and exterior paint, the peanut resides at Cahill’s Market (except when it’s at the festival).

Cahill's, which features a produce market and restaurant (aka "chicken kitchen") where the menu changes daily, are worth a visit. When you can get good food and see a 20-foot boiled peanut, why not?

Cahill’s Market, 1055 May River Road, Bluffton; cahillsmarket.com.

World’s Largest Sweet Tea

(98 miles; 1 hour, 37 minutes)

The town of Summerville holds the Guinness World Record for the largest iced tea — appropriate South Carolina's official hospitality beverage is sweet tea, which is obviously iced. (If you're wondering, the official state drink is milk.)

The 2,524-gallon glass of tea "was brewed using 210 pounds of loose leaf tea and 1,700 pounds of sugar," Guinness reports. "Organizers initially used 300 pounds of ice to chill the tea, however this failed to reduce the tea to the required 45 degrees. Several hundred pounds of additional ice were needed to meet the guideline requirements."

The tea, of course, was served from a Mason jar, and is now simply called Mason. Mason stands more than 15 feet tall in the courtyard of Summerville's Municipal Complex.

Staying on brand, Summerville hosts a Sweet Tea Half Marathon and 10K. This year's event is scheduled for Saturday, Nov. 10.

Summerville Municipal Complex, 200 S. Main St., Summerville. www.visitsummerville.com.

Nostalgic Station

(73 miles; 1 hour, 16 minutes.)

Some may call this restored 1930s-era gas station a vintage shop. Others may consider it a time machine.

You’ll hear music from the 1950s and 1960s and see knickknacks from film and television.

You’ll see Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley and Betty Boop; vintage soda bottles, Betty Boop bobbleheads and Lionel trains; post cards, and die-cast classic cars.

On the first Friday of each month, vintage automobiles descend on the Filling Station for a car show.

Nostalgic Station, 1110 W. Main St., Laurens. www.facebook.com/nostalgicstation.

Mars Bluff Crater

(92 miles; 1 hour, 28 minutes.)

In March 1958, a group of four B-47E planes took off from Hunter Air Force Base in Savannah, Georgia, en route to England to perform mock bomb drops. But one of those bombs didn’t make it beyond Mars Bluff.

The plane accidentally dropped the 8,000-pound atomic bomb (which was not armed with a nuclear warhead) on a home in the small town near Florence. The bomb didn’t kill anyone, but destroyed the home and left a hole 35 feet deep and 70 feet wide. That crater is still there today, heavily overgrown with trees and brush.

The crater itself is not open to the public, but a roadside marker commemorates the event.

Artifacts from Mars Bluff can be seen on display in the Florence County Museum’s Pee Dee History Gallery during museum hours.

Mars Bluff Crater historical marker, 4776 Lucius Circle, Mars Bluff. Florence County Museum, 111 W. Cheves St., Florence; www.flocomuseum.org.

World’s Smallest Police Station

(26 miles; 32 minutes.)

From 1940 to 1990, the building — which resembles a garden shed from the outside — served as Ridgeway’s official police station, accommodating several officers with an old wooden desk, a wood-burning stove, a small filing cabinet and a black rotary phone.

Before it was a police station, it was the town well.

The area behind the police station is known as the cotton yard because it was used as a staging area for farmers bringing their cotton into town to be loaded on the train for shipment.

The building got time on the big screen in the the 1989 film "Staying Together," starring Stockard Channing.

The current police station is located across the road.

The town of Carrabelle, in the Florida Panhandle, also claims to have the world's smallest police station — but the Carrabelle station was where officers answered the phone, not where they had desks.

The new police station is located at 160 S. Palmer Street, Ridgeway. The World's Smallest is across the street, between Ruff Hardware and the Fairfield Library Ridgeway Branch. ridgewaysc.org.

The Peachoid

(115 miles; 1 hour, 59 minutes.)

When the staff of the Gaffney Board of Public Works decided to build a new elevated water storage tank in the shape of a peach in 1981, it had no idea that it would be constructing an iconic landmark.

What is now called “The Peachoid” has been the “butt” of some jokes, but it’s a memorable enough sight that it was shown in “House of Cards,” inspiring the Huffington Post to write in 2013, when the series debuted on Netflix, that "the Peachoid really exists" and remains functional.

The peach has a 12-foot-long stem that is 18 inches in diameter at the top. A huge leaf — 60 feet long, 16 feet wide, and weighing 7 tons — is on one side. The Peachoid is visible from Interstate 85 near the exit for S.C. 11.

Gaffney's public works department put a fence around the structure earlier this year to prevent vandalism, but you can still take Peachoid selfies. After all, if you're too close to the fence, you'll never get the whole thing in the frame.

The Peachoid is next to Fatz Cafe, 294 Peachoid Road, Gaffney. www.gbpw.com.

Barnwell County Courthouse and Vertical Sundial

(62 miles; 1 hour, 25 minutes.)

It may not be as easy as pushing a button on your smartphone, but the rare vertical sundial has been giving folks the correct time for much longer.

The sundial in front of the Barnwell County Courthouse has been sharing the time of more than 150 years. It is thought to be the only vertical sundial in the United States, and though erected two years prior to standard time, it keeps within two minutes of that.

Barnwell County Courthouse, 57 Wall St., Barnwell. www.cityofbarnwell.com.

Thelma and Louise

(142 miles, 2 hours, 12 minutes)

These pastel pink and blue elephants stand in front of Papa Joe’s fireworks store in Hardeeville, off Interstate 95.

Locals named the pair Thelma and Louise, after the road-tripping best friends in the 1991 movie.

Papa Joe's Fireworks, 15794 Whyte Hardee Blvd., Hardeeville; www.facebook.com/papaandcrazyjoesfireworks.

UFO Welcome Center

(60 miles; 58 minutes.)

On its website, an Orangeburg County town describes itself two sentences: “Bowman’s a small, striving town, of about 1,200 people, nestled between the capital city of Columbia and the historic port city of Charleston. The Town of Bowman consists of the following: a police department, fire department, town hall, post office, a pharmacy, medical center, a grocery store, a dry cleaners, an inner-city park, a nature park w/ a walking trail, several beauty salons and barbershops, numerous specialty shops, a few restaurants, a gas station, and a number of other local businesses within walking distance.”

Though it goes on to list its two interstates (26 and 95) as well as towns within "reasonable driving distance," it doesn’t even hint at perhaps its biggest tourist attraction: the UFO Welcome Center.

There is nothing official about this attraction, although if you Google “weird attractions in South Carolina” you’ll find it on most of those lists.

Jody Pendarvis built his 46-foot-wide UFO Welcome Center in 1994, hoping to attract visitors from outer space. If Pendarvis is there, according to visitor reviews, you can probably talk him into a tour — even though he says it's "just for space people," according to a reviewer who also says the center should be on Airbnb.

4004 Homestead Road, Bowman.

About this series

This is the seventh in a series about road trips within South Carolina. Throughout the summer, GoColumbia will explore some of the state's lesser-known attractions. Travel distances and times are calculated from the S.C. State House. Previous installments:

▪ Places every South Carolinian should visit at least once.

▪ A ghost tour of South Carolina that will scare you silly.

▪ Lesser known historic sites.

▪ Places to explore nature, from weird formations to hidden waterfalls.

▪ Island attractions you might not know about.

▪ How to get to South Carolina's most remote beaches.

Do you know of some “undiscovered” spots in South Carolina that could make for a fun day trip? Please share! Tweet any suggestions you have to @gocolumbiasc.

This story was originally published June 29, 2018 at 7:45 PM.