Chicago's museum dedicated to the history of bondage and fetishism is more textbook than titillation.

A 17-acre urban oasis featuring a pollinator garden, heritage trees, and an aerial tree walk.

This museum and curiosity shop provides a glimpse into an often-overlooked past to show guests that there is beauty and wonder in the macabre.

A tribute to a unique bike race that takes place every year.

At this airport "microcinema," you can catch a film before you catch a flight.

This theatre and its amazing marquee harken back to the Golden Age of Hollywood.

This café is dedicated to serving coffee roasted by Native American-owned companies.

Definitely not a clown bar.

This public art piece proves that in Portland even reporting the weather is a thing of whimsy.

On East Burnside, a 24-hour vending machine distributes world-class pastries.

The world's last remaining store of its kind.

This extravagant Art Nouveau rest stop features a million-dollar view of the Columbia River.

Two massive rock outcroppings on the Oregon coastline.

The second largest waterfall by volume in the U.S., Willamette Falls is outdone only by Niagara in the amount of water that is pushed northward.

These old stone ruins in the Oregon wilderness were once bathrooms and are steeped in legends of murder.

This large Sitka spruce that appears to be floating in mid-air, has defied logic for years.

A wall of chewing gum moonlights as collective art.

This futuristic German spa allows visitors to float in a pool of salt water while zoning out to underwater techno.

One of the oldest producers of hand-folded fortune cookies still uses its original secret recipe.

A vertically floating hemlock controls the waves and weather at Crater Lake.

This lake in the Cascades lives up to its name, disappearing down a hole every spring.

This garden is dedicated to a Portland cartoonist who specialized in dark humor.

World's only nuclear reactor operated by liberal arts undergraduates.

Nestled between a college and a golf course, the garden is home to more than 2,500 rhododendrons.