Not unlike countless other roadtrippers, I’m inexplicably drawn to the rural stretches of the United States highway system. There is a tone you can feel in a vehicle when a desert horizon flattens a city skyline. There’s a tangible reassurance when the road begins to work with the contours of the landscape instead of against them. These places are still very wild. They represent a piece of us that is at risk of vanishing. This past summer I wanted to make something that paid homage to a rapidly disappearing chapter in American history: the age of roadside attractions.  Who among us doesn’t feel a sense of uneasy wonder when we pass a forlorn business in a lesser-traveled corner of the country. A gas station separated by 100 miles of high alpine sage fields on both sides – a diner buried in soot from a long abandoned industrial operation nearby.…