by Ginger Voight

Created on: April 10, 2009   Last Updated: May 14, 2010

If you're looking for something a little more off the beaten path than your own local fair, the good news is there are many more unique festivals to be found across this great nation of ours, all you have to do is look.

You might be a redneck if you head on over to East Dublin, Georgia this July for the 13th Annual Summer Redneck Games. From the Butt Crack Competition, their Mud Pit Belly Flop to Redneck Horseshoes (played with toilet seats), this festival sponsored by local country station WOZY Y.96 is a regular hootenanny. Don't miss out on the Armpit Serenade or bobbing for pig's feet.

www.y96redneckgames.com

And while the Georgia cuisine is sure to delight, you should still head on up to Missoula, Montana in August to really prove your intestinal fortitude with an experience affectionately dubbed the Testy Festy. Rock Creek Lodge's Testicle Festival is an adults only foray into ingesting as many Rocky Mountain Oysters (bull testicles) as your heart desires.

www.testyfesty.com

Also in Minnesota you'll find Barnesville's Potato Days, a spot so renowned for its potato production that it celebrates its main claim to fame every August. Selected often as one of the best summer festivals in the country, this free event entertains tens of thousands of revelers with events like mashed potato wrestling and the Miss Tater Tot Pageant. Needless to say the food is quite a'peelin, if you're a spud fan.

www.potatodays.com

After you've done the mundane terrestrial thing, head on down to Roswell, New Mexico for the Amazing Roswell UFO Festival in July and welcome the weird. From the alien costume contest to the parade, the fireworks will have you thinking you've blasted out into space.

www.roswellufofestival.com

For those of you want to smash your winter cabin fever with offbeat winter festivals, look no further than Trenary, Michigan each February, where they proudly boast the Outhouse Classic a downhill race with yes, you guessed it outhouses.

http://www.outhouseclassic.com/

Not to be outdone, Nederland, Colorado offers "Frozen Dead Guy Days", a regular tradition where participants indulge in the weird and offbeat with none other than Coffin Races and a Polar Plunge into frigid water. Taking place in early March to herald in the warmer spring season, FDGD is a celebration for the most famous icy resident of Nederland Grandpa Bredo Morstoel who, though he died of a heart condition in 1989, now awaits the big thaw in his Tuff Shed in the hills above Nederland. How he got there is a story in and of itself, one that spans the globe in a parade like no other.

www.nederlandchamber.org/events_fdgd-home.html

So leave those deep fried Twinkies for people less adventurous and this winter and summer, try something completely unexpected.

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