5 Insane Vacations Your Great-Grandparents Totally Went On

The park built a raised bear feeding platform, along with bleachers from which guests could watch it. At a designated time, a ranger would ride a horse-drawn cart out to the feeding platform and give a lecture to the assembled masses, all while a swarm of hungry bears descended upon his position. Just like Disneyland, there were also VIP experiences up for grabs -- in this case, the chance to ride the garbage cart out to the feeding platform. If that sounds hilariously dangerous ... it, uh, was.

After we successfully taught bears that they could tap humans for food on demand, they began tapping humans for food on demand. Who could have foreseen?! Bears would no longer wait for the timed performances, but would instead squat in the middle of roads leading into the park, blocking cars until their occupants threw out food in the hopes of distracting them. People called them "hold-up bears," which is frankly an adorable name for bear robbery.

But once the inevitable happened and bears finally started attacking people for food, the program was gradually phased out until the bears once again learned to steer clear of guests. The guests, meanwhile, have yet to learn the same lesson.

There was even an octopus wrestling league, the World Octopus Wrestling Championship (or WOW), which of course quickly became corrupt. In order to ensure that spectators got enough bang for their buck, organizers began doping the shoreline with pre-caught octopi. Is nothing truly pure in this world?

Of course, there was a morbid element to it, too. It was a way of keeping close to relatives who had passed away. Because hey, what's a picnic without Uncle Morty's corpse decaying somewhere nearby? As one family explained in 1884, "We are going to keep Thanksgivin' with our father as was live and hearty this day last year ... we've brought somethin' to eat and a spirit-lamp to boil coffee."

We don't know what any of that means, but we know damn sure everybody involved in that scenario had a glorious mustache. Even the children.

Harrill spent his days preaching life lessons to assembled masses of tourists like a modern-day Diogenes. At his "School of Common Sense," Harrill would converse about everything from philosophy to society, nature, and the evils of "the Man." For the tourists who gathered there, he was their equivalent of Woodstock, Burning Man, and -- judging from the lack of food and housing -- Fyre Fest.

At his peak, Harrill saw nearly 10,000 visitors per year, and he made a pretty good living off of the change they donated to him. He later claimed he was the second-largest tourist attraction in North Carolina -- which is actually fairly believable, if you've ever been to North Carolina.