Susan recently installed Roadtrippers on her phone. You tell the app where you’re headed, it figures out where you are, and based on that it shows you points of interests along your route. On our test run of the app, Roadtrippers informed us that we were only 75 miles away from the world’s largest can of Coke. An hour later in Emporia, Kansas, we exited the turnpike, followed a big road that led to a smaller road that led to a dirt road, and found ourselves staring at an old silo painted to look like a can of Classic Coke.

Five minutes later, after shooting half a dozen pictures and taking a whiz out behind the world’s largest can of Coca-Cola, we were back on the road, sailing toward Truckhenge. Although we had no idea what Truckhenge really was, based on the name I had a pretty good idea.

I was wrong.

The sign on the fence outside Truckhenge told us to drive next door and knock on Ron Lessman’s front door, so we did. The vibe outside Ron Lessman’s “house” is one part Deliverance, one part Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Had I not seen other tourists emerging alive from the metal building in front of us, I’m not sure we would have went inside.

Meet Ron Lessman, every bureaucrat’s worst nightmare. Part artist, part free-thinker, and no doubt a full-time pain in the ass to everyone in Shawnee Country, Kansas who wears a tie, all Ron wanted to was be left alone on his farm, creating some art and collecting some old vehicles. In a lesson on “how not to deal with people like Ron Lessman,” the county took Ron to court “at least a dozen times” according to him, filing random charges and throwing tax codes at him. The last straw was when they attacked Ron’s vintage truck collection.

“They told me to pick up my trucks,” he says, “so I picked ’em up!” he says while making an obscene gesture. And literally, he picked up the trucks — but I’m getting ahead of myself. We wouldn’t see Truckhenge for at least another hour.

The tour of Truckhenge is really a tour of Ron’s home, and I want to reiterate that — we, random strangers on a road trip, had just knocked on a random guy’s door and five minutes later were standing inside his home.

“Actually, this is my shop,” he said. “The county says it’s part of my home because it’s connected and they want to tax me on the square footage, but really it’s my shop.”

The shop’s frame is made of the frames of eight mobile homes welded together that Ron got “somewhere” (Ron gets a lot of things “somewhere”). Within just a few minutes we’ve seen lots of Ron’s art. There are canvases with paintings, drop cloths with paintings, and pieces of wood with paintings. Even the floor — all 8,000 square foot of it — is painted.

“Here, put on these 3-D glasses,” Ron says while handing us a few pairs. With them on, he points to a painting he recently did using blue and red paint. I go to ask a question about the painting but he’s already on to the next one. Each painting comes with a point and a punch line before moving on to the next one. Ron is not only an artist but a comedian as well — a one man show.

“You wanna go upstairs?” he asks, and soon we’re climbing a set of sketchy stairs up towards a loft covered in old oak planks. The stairs’ handrail shifts when I grab onto it, and Ron assures Susan the floor is safe. As Ron shows the kids random rocks, stones, bones and fossils he pulled out of the ground while digging his 30 acre pond, I hear a noise behind him.

“Oh, that’s Charlie… I think,” says Ron. “Charlie, izzat you?” It is indeed Charlie, who is riding the elevator up. Technically it’s a modified forklift, but in Ron’s home, nothing is what it seems. Upon reaching the second story, Charlie waves “hi” and continues into the house to watch some television.

Before long we’re inside the home too. The inside is absolutely gorgeous. “There’s 8,000 feet of wiring and 75 breakers in here,” Ron points out. Over here’s some more artwork. Over there’s a stack of magazines and newspapers that Truckhenge has been mentioned in. The entire ceiling is covered with baskets filled with stuffed animals and other keepsakes. The tour gets awkward for a moment as the only place to stand is in the living room between Ron’s wife, Charlie and the television, but Ron Lessman doesn’t stand still for long.

“Hey, you guys wanna see my bridge to nowhere?”

Well c’mon, who doesn’t want to see a Bridge to Nowhere!

Hanging off the Bridge to Nowhere are painted drop cloths. I tell Ron that they remind me of sideshow advertisements and he says that’s the look he was going for. The farm just finished hosting its second annual “Tarot Time” event, sponsored by a local psychic and Ron’s wife who provided Tarot card, spirit, and aura readings. I begin to ask more about the event but we’re already climbing down off the Bridge to Nowhere and starting to look at Ron’s chainsaw carvings, of which there are many.

We are joined on the outside portion of the tour by a couple of Ron’s dogs and several peacocks. Occasionally the peacocks squawk at us and Ron takes a break from his performance to squawk back at them.

The tour of Ron’s chainsaw carvings takes you on a winding tour of the property. Most of the carvings took 15-20 minutes to complete, although some took “up to 45 minutes.” Ron told us he didn’t do any artwork for 40 years and then one day he picked up a chainsaw and starting sawing up logs. The carvings aren’t half bad, but the complete lack of caring about failing is inspiring.

“What’s the worst that could happen?” Ron asks.

“I guess you just end up with a smaller log,” I say.

Ron stops for a moment and strokes his scraggly beard. “That’s a good point,” he says. And now we’re walking again.

The tour takes us down past an abandoned school bus covered in spray paint before coming to what I thought was Truckhenge. It wasn’t. It was Boathenge.

Shawnee County, Kansas has a fear of Ron’s “things” — trucks and boats and whatever else he collects — floating 25 miles away and causing damage should his farm flood. Ron solved this problem by anchoring each boat with roughly forty thousand pounds of concrete. Each. In front of Boathenge are a bunch of bricks that Ron has laid out to spell words so that you can read them from Google Earth.

And then there’s Beer Bottle City, located between Boathenge and Truckhenge, a bunch of small concrete bunkers and towers that have been filled in with beer bottles.

One question that comes up a lot is, “why?” Ron heads this one off at the pass every time. “We’re just trying to have fun out here,” he says repeatedly. Between the paintings and the carvings and the buildings and being hauled into court from time to time, I get the feeling Ron doesn’t sit still much.

A bit further down the path, past Beer Bottle City and a giant concrete tub full of murky water, frogs and occasionally snakes, is Truckhenge.

Like Boathenge, the trucks are covered with layers of spray paint (the kids are even encouraged to leave their mark on Boathenge, which they did). It was Truckhenge that started it all though, and it’s the culmination of the tour. Ron’s eyes sparkle as he counts the hundreds of thousands of dollars he has cost the county, money they wasted by trying to get a random guy out in the woods to not express himself.

They failed.

One of the trucks has its hood removed, and on the hood is painted a message: “A Memorial For Liberty. Rome Didn’t Kill Jesus, Bureaucrats Did.” I can’t think of anything I’ve seen so far on the tour that sums up Ron’s message better than that, so I ask him for a picture in front of it with him. He obliges.

On the way back to Ron’s car he asks us if we want to see his bone collection which is conveniently stored in another building.

“Only if you’re not about to add us to it,” I say. He laughs. As the kids pile into the building Susan takes a picture of me, hoping it won’t be my last.

For another five to ten minutes Ron digs through more of his treasure — more bones and stones, some of them millions of years old. This isn’t a museum where things are off limits. Ron hands each one to the kids. One’s holding a shark rib; the other, a lizard fossil.

The tour ends where it began, back in Ron’s shop. There wasn’t an obvious “tip jar” out anywhere but I offered him one anyway. Hopefully it’ll cover the cost of a few bags of concrete or gas for the chainsaw. As we walked toward our car we could see another car driving slowly down the road outside Ron’s fence. As we pulled out, the next group pulled in.

I highly recommend visiting Truckhenge if you get the chance — not for the paintings or the sculptures or the rocks or the bones or the boats or the carvings or even the trucks, but for Ron Lessman’s stories, and more importantly, his attitude. Meeting someone who not only thinks outside the box but quite literally lives there is a refreshing and invigorating experience.

Here’s to ya, Ron.