By Rhonda Ostertag

What happens when an imaginative farmer puts his hands to a pile of rocks? Something like the Petersen Rock Garden and Museum. The folksy roadside attraction eight miles south of Redmond, Ore., represents 17 years of labor by Rasmus Petersen, a Danish immigrant who started to build fanciful miniatures of hand-laid volcanic rock, agate, obsidian, and jasper in 1935. He filled four acres of farmland with intricately detailed cottages, churches, bridges, castles, lagoons, and a seven-foot-tall re-creation of the Statue of Liberty. $3. Off U.S. Highway 97, 7930 SW 77th St., (541) 382-5574.