(bright jazz music) - [Will] This week on "Wild Travels," we'll take part in Chicago's version of the Iditarod, the Chiditarod, where dogs and sleds are replaced by people in shopping carts, check into the infamous Watergate Hotel's Scandal Room, visit the studio of surrealist Michael P. Price in Arizona, squeeze into a dwarf car at a museum in Maricopa, and then marvel at an art exhibit made entirely from Peeps.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Wild Travels is made possible in part by Alaska Railroad, providing year-round transportation to many Alaska destinations, traversing nearly 500 miles of wild landscapes between Anchorage, Fairbanks, Denali National Park, and more.

alaskarailroad.com.

By Sheboygan, Wisconsin, centrally located on the shores of Lake Michigan, is home to Kohler-Andrae State Park, and outdoor adventures waiting to be discovered.

visitsheboygan.com.

By American Road Magazine.

Get your kicks on Route 66 and everywhere else a two-Lane highway can take you.

American Road Magazine fuels your road trip dreams.

And by the South Shore of Lake Michigan, exploring the Indiana Dunes, unique attractions, festivals, and more, just minutes from downtown Chicago.

alongthesouthshore.com.

(upbeat music) - If you look hard enough, go off the beaten track far enough, you'll find an America teeming with the unusual, the odd, the downright strange.

I'm Will Clinger, and I'm your guide on a package tour we like to call "Wild Travels."

(upbeat music continues) (cannon booms) (lively music) The Iditarod is a long-distance dog sled race in Alaska, whereas the Chiditarod is, well, let's ask this guy.

- What you're about to witness is the 18th annual Chiditarod, which is a costumed shopping cart race, bar crawl, beauty pageant, food drive, talent show, chaos generator.

- It's too much to even almost say in one sentence.

- [Devin] We're a parody on the Alaskan Iditarod.

- I figured that out.

- Instead of the dogs, we have the humans.

Instead of the sleds, we have the shopping carts, the costume-adorned shopping carts.

Instead of the frozen tundra, we have the normally frozen streets of Chicago.

- [Will] How many teams are there?

- This year we have 60 teams, and each team has five people: four dogs pulling the shopping cart, one musher running behind it.

So we have 300 racers this year.

- In Iditarod, if you lose a dog, you're disqualified.

Is that the same thing here?

- You gotta finish with the same people.

No dog left behind in Chiditarod.

- [Will] What are the rules?

They gotta bring 69 pounds of food with them, right?

- Yes, so at its core, the Chiditarod is a fundraiser and a food drive, and each team has to come to the starting line with a minimum of 69 pounds.

- Why 69?

Why not round it off to 70?

- [Devin] Well, why not 69?

- [Participant] All of that food goes to the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

- It occurs to me that you could really build up your 69 pounds by having all cans.

That's heavier.

- [Participant] Exactly.

- Here's your food ready to be donated.

You don't have to run the race with this food.

You give it away at the beginning, right?

- Yeah.

And, well, we also are gonna probably bust into a can of beans before 'cause we're kinda hungry, but yeah.

- [Will] What's the theme of the team?

- [Participant] We are Chiditaroll 'cause we are a roller coaster.

- Can you reenact a roller coaster right now?

- [Team] Yes!

(team yelling) - [Will] What about art carts?

I've heard about this.

- They're usually larger, slower... - [Will] More people.

- [Devin] More people.

More interactive.

- Aliens are real!

- So Chiditarod in the spirit of Chicago has elements of bribery where you can bribe the judges for slight amounts of time off.

- There's also sabotage.

Teams are actually able to set... Oh, that's a bribe.

The Dilly Partons.

- [Participant] Absolutely.

- [Will] It's a mixture of Dolly Parton and dill pickles.

Is that- - That's right.

- Would you like a pickleback shot?

- [Will] Is that your bribe?

- [Participant] Courtesy of the Dilly Partons.

- [Will] Is it got actual alcohol in there?

- Vodka and pickle juice.

(upbeat music) - [Devin] We're corking this street proper so everyone can run with all the glory they need to.

- [Will] But once they get off into the course, they're on the sidewalk, right?

- That's right.

After we have our epic starting line, they go to the sidewalk.

- Safety first.

- Safety third.

- [Crowd] Five, four, three, two, one!

(group cheering) (energetic music) - [Will] Each team has a different route to take to get to the finish right?

It's five different bars.

- [Devin] That's right.

We got about 12 or 13 routes.

So we balance all the teams between the five checkpoints, so no checkpoint is overly crowded at any one time.

- [Will] Once they get to the bar, they gotta stay for 25 minutes, something.

- [Devin] Yeah, that's right.

So each of the checkpoints is an immersive experience run by a dedicated team of volunteers who come back year after year.

They'll have games and activities to participate in in the checkpoints.

- The Irish Nobleman Pub was the first checkpoint we visited where the theme seemed to be Alice in Wonderland.

Well, this is your first checkpoint.

You gotta stay here for 25 minutes, right?

- Yeah.

- You guys gonna play the games they've got in there?

- [Participant] We will.

- I'll be taking a nap.

- I am moss.

- I am a cicada killer wasp, which lives underneath grounds.

- [Will] Who's the musher and who are the dogs?

- [Participant] I am the musher.

- How do you make your dogs go fast?

You obviously don't have a whip of any kind.

- Motivation with gummy worms and fortified dirt today.

- Fortified dirt.

- Correct.

- [Will] Back on the street, the race was in full swing, but nobody seemed to be in too much of a hurry.

- We haven't gotten sabotaged yet.

A while back, a couple years ago, a couple people got handcuffed together.

- [Will] Dirty play.

- Yeah, it's creative.

You gotta hand it to 'em.

- [Will] Have you sabotaged anyone?

- We've never done a sabotage.

It's never really kinda been our- - Why not, Bonnie?

- Well, I think we're just all here to have a good time.

- [Will] Let's keep it fun, shall we?

- Yeah.

(upbeat music) (team cheering) - [Participant] We have a whole team of master judges who are roaming around here, roaming around the checkpoints and who all meet in a secret undisclosed location prior to the award ceremony to choose who wins and who loses.

- Let's not rush into any judgements.

- I'm not judging anything yet.

Yeah, no, I'm judging nothing right now.

We'll see.

I'm hoping this is a safe place to start stacking up the bribes that we get, but we'll see.

- Want some cookies?

- [Will] Our next checkpoint was Phyllis's Musical Inn, which had a decidedly Sergeant Pepper vibe.

- Our teen name is the Teenage Mutant Tina Turners.

- [Will] Are you a musher or a dog?

- You know, I like to switch roles, so every once in a while I try this; sometimes I try the other.

- You go both ways.

- I go both ways, yeah.

It's the only way to go.

- [Will] When you mush, how do you get your dogs to go faster?

- Consensual light taps, I would say.

- You don't whip 'em with anything, do you?

- Well, I might actually.

- Really?

- I do.

I have a green whip in here somewhere.

- [Will] What is the biggest challenge out there?

Is it steering around all the obstacles?

- [Participant] I would say it's the potholes in Chicago, unfortunately.

- [Will] They're deadly.

Has anybody tried to sabotage you yet?

- Repercussions will be harsh and immediate.

- Any mishaps so far?

- The front of the car fell off.

We had to fix it mid-race, but we came back even- - Was it sabotage?

- No, poor construction, but we fixed it.

- After the five checkpoint bars had been negotiated, all that remained was the finish line and the first team to cross it was the provocatively named Shaggin Wagon.

We encountered them in the first flush of victory.

The Shaggin Wagon are winners.

- Yes.

- We can't believe it.

We couldn't have done it without this beautiful horse.

His name is Glue Stick.

We've been training for a couple days now.

- I hate to say this, guys, but a lot of the teams don't seem all that competitive.

They don't seem that interested in winning.

You guys were obviously.

- Yeah, the lack of motivation is really disappointing, especially because this is for charity.

- [Will] Do you win any money?

What's the prizes?

- There's no prize, but what's great about it is that we're raising a bunch of money, and- - We got a ribbon.

- You got a ribbon.

That's something.

In addition to ribbons for everyone, dozens of awards were handed out at the final ceremony that night.

Among the winning teams were two of our favorites: The Teenage Mutant Tina Turners and the unforgettable Dilly Partons.

(mysterious music) (mysterious music continues) (mysterious music ends) On the anniversary of the infamous break-in at the Democratic National Committee's headquarters, we paid a visit to the equally infamous Watergate Hotel where they're busy making lemonade out of lemons.

Hi, what's your name?

- Vivian Lacroix.

- And here we are at the Watergate Hotel where 50 some years ago a scandal occurred that brought down a president.

- Exactly.

- Sort of an ignominious occurrence that you weren't exactly publicizing, but now you're embracing the notoriety, right?

- [Vivian] Absolutely.

We're all about scandal here.

- [Will] People can actually stay in the room where Liddy and Hunt planned the whole thing.

- There's no need to break in.

You can just book it online on reservations.

- And a little extra, you can actually meet the detectives that work the case and maybe even meet Nixon himself or an impersonator.

- Absolutely.

Nixon shows up at random times in this hotel.

- Vivian, where are we headed now?

- We are headed up to the room where it happened: the exclusive Scandal Room.

- [Will] Let's go inside.

There's no mistaking where you are with these posters, is there?

- No, absolutely not.

This is Rob, one of the wonderful historians that we have available, to enhance your experience at the Watergate.

- This was the room where Hunt and Liddy orchestrated the break-in to the Democratic National Committee headquarters.

- Which was actually in another building.

- Yes, so the Watergate office building is adjacent to the Watergate Hotel.

They're using radios and microphones to communicate with the White House plumbers.

The night of the burglary, only the battery on one of those was working.

So as the burglary is taking place, the burglars are complaining that the radio's just making way too much noise.

So the one man who has the radio that is working turns it off.

- Oops.

- Cuts off communication between the orchestrators of the break-in.

- And the burglars, the plumbers don't find out that these policemen are on their way in until it's too late and they're caught red-handed.

- [Rob] That's exactly right.

- And now Liddy and Hunt have to get the heck outta here, right?

- Yes, pronto.

They sort of pack up their stuff pretty quickly.

Unfortunately, in that eagerness to get out of here, they leave some pretty incriminating things behind.

- Now, you say, unfortunately this happened, but fortunately for democracy.

- Yes.

Unfortunate for the burglars.

- A key piece of evidence was a burglar's address book showing Hunt's direct White House phone number.

They get caught red-handed over there.

Eventually, they find a lot of stuff over here and the cover is blown, and the beginning of the end of Nixon and his cabal.

- That's right, yeah.

- [Will] Are these actual props that would've been used by the burglars?

- What the Watergate Hotel has done is they furnished the room with '60s and '70s type furniture.

- [Will] What's out here?

Mr. President!

- Good afternoon.

Please.

- It can't be a pleasant experience for you to be returning to the Watergate.

- Yes, it is a little rough.

- [Will] It brings back some bad memories.

- Awful memories.

Awful memories.

But the American people have to know that their president is not a crook.

- Mr. President, some interesting people lived at the Watergate at the time.

Rosemary Woods, your secretary who erased those tapes.

- That's correct, poor Rosemary, stretching as she did, erasing those 18 minutes.

- Yeah, and John and Martha Mitchell lived here, didn't they?

- Yes.

They lived right across the courtyard here from the hotel.

- [Will] Had Nixon ever stayed here?

- No, no, never.

Never an upscale.

You know, my wife has a good Republican cloth coat.

- The unsung hero for discovering the burglary was Frank Willis, the security guard.

He found that taped open door.

That is the door that Frank Willis noticed the tape on his first round that evening.

- [Will] Is this the door they used in the movie "All the President's Men"?

- No, actually it isn't.

They shot it in a different part of the garage.

- And we pretend that it is because we're all about authenticity on this show.

Ever since this happened, every scandal ends with gate now: Travelgate, Weaselgate.

Is that a point of pride sort of?

- Absolutely.

We are now selling our weddings as Wedding Gate, so big hashtag.

- Now, if somebody wants to come to visit the Watergate, maybe stay in the Scandal Room, where do they go?

- [Vivian] We are located in downtown DC right next to the Kennedy Center.

- [Will] And not far away, you'll find the garage where Deep Throat secretly rendezvoused with Bob Woodward and where I authentically entered and exited.

(bright music) - In the gray Wisconsin winters, we needed something mood elevating.

And when I went to my local drugstore and walked down the center aisle and noticed that there were colors that I wasn't seeing outside or anywhere, and I saw Peeps.

And I toyed with the idea about how to have a Peep show and not make it sound obviously bad.

But after tinkering with it for a while and coming up with suggestions of how we could create something that was national and universal and family-friendly and fun, we launched it and had 39 entries the first year.

This year, we have 138 pieces by 211 participants.

This year, we have 138 pieces by 211 participants.

So you must have a Peep, either the little chick or the little bunny, in your piece or an image of it because it's sometimes not easy to work with marshmallow.

I love the year that one of the nurses did a piece called ColonoscoPeep, and it was an actual little Peep on the surgery table.

But like a mother, I can't declare which child is my favorite; I love them all for different reasons.

The Peep-a-Rama has not been done before and everybody who looks at it said that it would be wonderful if there was such a thing.

The Funhouse is a great piece made by an artist who was playing with Peeps in front of the microwave and noticed the Peeps could be manipulated and she came up with that.

I like the fact we got three Bernie Sanders meme pieces all with Bernie sitting in the chair, one of them with actual cross-stitched mittens.

I think they're all clever, the political to the simple kid ones.

The winner of this exhibition gets bragging rights and not only for a year but for a Peep eternity.

- When it comes to automobiles, we Americans often believe that bigger is better, but Ernie Adams has a contrarian streak and prefers his cars not super-sized but semi-shrunk.

(bright music) (graphic pops) Hey.

Ernie Adams, right?

- [Ernie] Yes.

- [Will] You're sort of the father of the dwarf car.

- [Ernie] I am, yes.

- [Will] Can I call you the dwarf car king?

- They call me the Little Car Guy.

- [Will] How many of these have you built?

- There's about 12 of 'em.

This is a '32 Ford three-window coupe.

It's got everything the real car had.

- And this pops up sideways, right?

- It's got a Toyota four-cylinder Hemi under there.

- Now, Toyota engines, because they're smaller?

- Yeah, they're only like 18 inches long.

- [Will] What's the scale of these to the original car?

- [Ernie] About 11/16 of the real car.

- That's very detailed.

And they're all homemade, right?

- All homemade from scratch, from flat sheet metal.

- [Will] You don't just take a bigger version of this car and cut the parts down.

- [Ernie] We make the complete body and everything.

The only thing we buy would be the lights.

That's a 1940 Mercury chopped top coupe.

- It's got a name here, Ernie.

Cradle of Love.

How did you come up with that?

- Well, I have a lady that cruised with me for 11 years.

- [Will] That was your eventual wife, wasn't it?

- No.

This is the first metal car that I built, built in 1965.

And all I had was a homemade hack saw to cut down through the refrigerators.

- [Will] It's all made of refrigerators.

- [Ernie] Yeah, there's 9 refrigerators involved in this.

- Which means it's naturally air conditioned.

- (laughs) Well, yeah, naturally, two windows down 40 miles an hour.

The seats, the back folds down, and then they flip up so you can walk into the back seat.

- [Will] How did you get started doing this?

- My mother bought our home place 1944 and the city dump was about within a half mile away from us.

- [Will] You raided the dump for parts.

- I'd bring them old motors home and get 'em running, and I was learning my trade and didn't know it.

- So you've always been automotively gifted?

Can we say that?

- Well, yeah.

This is a 1954 Chevy Bel Air called Little Bitty.

(upbeat music) That's a 1942 Ford convertible.

I drove that car to Chicago and back from Phoenix.

- These are all street legal, meaning you could take these on any road in the country?

- Yeah.

I looked in the dictionary and it said to dwarf something is to make it smaller, so we called 'em dwarfs.

- I woulda gone with size-challenged.

- (chuckles) With what?

- What's this?

- That's my hillbilly car.

- [Will] Looks like you got an outhouse on the top here.

Is that Bill Clinton?

- No, Don Laughlin.

- Don Laughlin.

I should have known that.

- [Ernie] My wife dresses to kill.

She cooks the same way.

Never go to bed mad.

Stay up and fight.

- [Will] This one's called Precious Memory.

- When I was a teenager, I used to see the kids cruising their old cars down the main street of our town.

There was a guy and a girl in the backseat and they're always laying on each other, necking, you know.

- So your precious memory is a pair of teenagers necking in the back; can we be honest?

- Yeah.

- This is your shop in here, huh?

- Well, this is the birthing room.

This is where they all start from scratch.

This is gonna be a '41 Chevy two-door sedan.

- [Will] How long you been working on it?

- I've got a year and a half in this now.

That's a grill out of an original car, so you can see the difference how much smaller this car is than the original.

- Oh, you dwarfed it good.

(horn honks) Ernie, you and I are not of small stature.

You're what?

Six?

- Six foot.

- I'm 6'1" and a half.

You're saying we're gonna get into this dwarf car and be comfortable?

- [Ernie] I hope we'll be comfortable.

- There's not a lot of leg room, but I'm not kissing my knees.

We didn't need quaker oil to get in here.

(engine revs) Oh, she purrs like a kitten.

- Go somewhere?

- Let's go somewhere.

(peaceful music) Now, what kind of mileage you get on this?

- Get 31 miles per gallon.

- [Will] And how fast can it go?

- [Ernie] It'll run 99 miles an hour.

- [Will] You're lying.

- I held it for 10 miles at 99 to see if we can see a hundred, but it wouldn't show us a hundred.

- [Will] I should make a citizen's arrest retrospectively on that one.

Ernie Adams, if somebody wants to pay you a visit and get a load of these dwarf cars, where do they go?

- 16 miles south and west of the town of Maricopa, Arizona.

- Thanks for the ride, Ernie.

- You bet.

- [Will] Coming soon on "Wild Travels", extraterrestrials at the UFO Fest in Oregon, the Museum of Mental Health where Cuckoo's Nest was filmed, the National Flight Academy in Pensacola, and enormous model ships and a rock band made from toothpicks.

(smooth jazz music) Artist Michael P. Price creates wildly imaginative, almost hallucinogenic paintings.

But his canvas is a computer screen and pixels are his paint.

Michael Pierre Price, artist extraordinaire.

- Oh my gosh, yes.

- Can I call you a techspressionist?

- [Michael] Yes, you may.

- You paint in pixels, not oils.

- That's correct.

I paint in a virtual studio.

- But you didn't start as an artist; you were gonna be an academic, right?

- [Michael] That's correct.

My educational background is in physics, math, and astronomy.

- You say that with your art, you incorporate mathematics, physics, psychology, spirituality.

- Yes.

- I don't know if art can contain all that.

- I needed mathematics and physics to be able to understand the structures of everything.

And then, for me, I've always been a theoretician.

I like to theorize about things, and my art is the same way.

The two major forms of art that I pursue are abstract and surreal.

In order for us to see beyond like our everyday existence to take in the grand scope of the universe and the world is you can pursue that abstractly or with a sense of dreams.

- Is it safe to say that there's some mind-altering drugs involved?

- No.

- [Will] Does the word peyote mean anything to you?

- Well, sure, it does, but that's not something that I've done.

(relaxing music) - [Will] What fever dream inspired this particular work?

- Well, this one is really about the future and how the future doesn't really exist.

- I'm thinking Dali might've been an inspiration.

- Yeah, actually, Dali is very much an inspiration for me.

He was very interested in physics.

- Who knew?

- I did.

This is actually a mathematical piece based on a fractal.

This one really dealt with my spiritual journey.

- I thought you said it was mathematics.

- It is, but- - You can't do both.

- Well, yes you can.

(laughs) - [Will] Here's another surrealist painting.

And it's got QR codes built into it, right?

It's interactive.

- Yes, it is.

It's very interactive.

If you have a phone that can read QR codes, you can learn about the full symbolism of the artwork.

You can learn about what the square root of -1 means.

This is one of my abstract works.

Again, this was created using fractal mathematics.

- [Will] What are fractal mathematics?

- Fractals didn't really develop until the 1960s by a fellow named... - Fract.

(Michael laughs) - [Michael] By a fellow named Mandelbrot.

Here, you'll see the figure eight.

- [Will] I thought it was an amoeba, but go ahead.

- For me, that was part of the energy of the universe looking down at the subatomic level.

- [Will] Again, I'm gonna say peyote.

- (laughs) All right.

- Michael, this is sort of your easel in a way.

- Yes.

- This is where you do all your work.

- Yes, it is.

- [Will] You've never lifted a paintbrush in your life; admit it.

- I haven't.

This was the very first iteration of this image; it was my starting point.

My software is a colleague or a collaborative element in creating my art.

- Some would call that cheating.

I wouldn't, but some might.

- Where I come into being, where the artist comes in is my intention of what I'm trying to do, how I manipulate things.

- [Will] The computer is your tool.

- It is a tool.

It's a very advanced tool.

I started this in this 3D program, and it allows me to create various 3D elements that I stage.

- Michael, what does the future hold for the kind of art that you do, or has it gone as far as it can go?

- I don't think we're close to seeing how far this kind of art can go.

- Limitless.

(laid-back music) (energetic music) We're always looking for new destinations; the wilder, the better.

So if you've got an idea for our show, let us know, and thanks for watching.

(bright music) - [Narrator] Wild Travels is made possible in part by Alaska Railroad, providing year-round transportation to many Alaska destinations, traversing nearly 500 miles of wild landscapes between Anchorage, Fairbanks, Denali National Park, and more.

alaskarailroad.com.

By Sheboygan, Wisconsin, centrally located on the shores of Lake Michigan, is home to Kohler-Andrae State Park, and outdoor adventures waiting to be discovered.

visitsheboygan.com.

By American Road Magazine.

Get your kicks on Route 66 and everywhere else a two-Lane highway can take you.

American Road Magazine fuels your road trip dreams.

And by the South Shore of Lake Michigan, exploring the Indiana Dunes, unique attractions, festivals, and more, just minutes from downtown Chicago.

alongthesouthshore.com.