Places Michele Mecca Wants to Go

Thousands of pieces of art have been carved into the rock at the site of an ancient volcanic eruption.

A floating cat sanctuary on an Amsterdam canal.

Its dark depths conceal millions of rare, delicate crystal formations.

A free park where visitors can learn about and collect 440 million-year-old fossils.

A 24-hour vending machine restocked daily with homemade full-sized pecan pies.

The house's confection-like decorations are the result of one man's painstaking work over decades.

Natural catch-basin rocks covered in thousands of drawings spanning many millennia.

This mountain tram provides stunning views while hanging from a single, steel thread.

Search for traces of the dinosaurs that roamed here more than 90 million years ago.

A statue in the Texas town that proudly calls itself the killer bee capital of the world.

The most beautiful Taco Bell in the world even has surfboard parking.

A memorial to a larger-than-life legend, inside a county that also holds Bunyan's death certificate.

This remote piece of Cape Breton coast was the unceremonious landing site of the first solo, east-west transatlantic flight made by a female aviator.

This small monument to the great inventor contains a time capsule and a Wi-Fi hotspot.

This little valley along Highway 1 is engulfed by thousands of lilies during the spring season.

It should come as no surprise that the world's largest artichoke lies in the town that calls itself the "Artichoke Center of the World."

The peaceful gravesite of a rugged wild west gunman echoes the touching story of his last days.

A dwindling menagerie of anthropomorphic oil derrick animals still dot the barren California landscape.

Alleyway plaque commemorating the death of a fictional character in The Maltese Falcon, not far from the author's home.

Every weekend, the parking lot of this Buddhist temple turns into a Thai street-food paradise.

An L.A. traffic island where the faces of locals have been carved into massive granite eggs.

Celebrating the transformation of trash into objects of beauty.

Bits and pieces from the ill-fated Donner Party's winter cabins.

A pair of large white marble lions guard this stretch of the Mojave Desert, and it is utterly mysterious how they got there.