Rock City begins as an ornamental garden on a mountainside: its visitors walk a path that takes them through rocks, over rocks, between rocks. They throw corn into a deer enclosure, cross a hanging bridge and peer out through a quarter-a-throw binoculars at a view that promises them seven states on the rare sunny days when the air is perfectly clear. And from there, like a drop into some strange hell, the path takes the visitors, millions upon millions of them every year, down into caverns, where they stare at back-lit dolls arranged into nursery-rhyme and fairy-tale dioramas. When they leave, they leave bemused, uncertain of why they came, of what they have seen, of whether they had a good time or not.

– American Gods, Neil Gaiman

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As near as anyone could figure it out, the exact center of the continental United States was several miles from Lebanon, Kansas, on Johnny Grib’s hog farm. By the 1930s the people of Lebanon were all ready to put a monument up in the middle of the hog farm, but Johnny Grib said that he didn’t want millions of tourists coming in and tramping all over and upsetting the hogs, so they put the monument to the geographical center of the United States two miles north of the town. They built a park, and a stone monument to go in the park, and a brass plaque on the monument. They blacktopped the road from the town, and, certain of the influx of tourists waiting to arrive, they even built a motel by the monument. Then they waited.

The tourists did not come. Nobody came.

– American Gods, Neil Gaiman

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"So when we get to Madison, what then?"

"Take Highway 14 west to Spring Green. We'll be meeting everyone at a place called the House on the Rock. You been there?"

"No," said Shadow. "But I've seen the signs."

– American Gods, Neil Gaiman

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I think I am well and favorably known at the Ambassador East, but this need not apply when I arrive in wrinkled hunting clothes, unshaven and lightly crusted with the dirt of travel and bleary-eyed from driving most of the night.

– Travels with Charley, John Steinbeck

The Ambassador East was sold in 2010, renovated and reopened as the Public Chicago Hotel.

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Then I knew where I was. And who I was.

I was David Lightman, Matthew Broderick's character in the movie WarGames. And this was his first scene in the film.

I was in the movie.

I took a quick glance around and saw a detailed replica of 20 Grand Palace, the combination arcade/pizza joint featured in the film.

– Ready Player One, Ernest Cline

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