Places dcowan Wants to Go

This whimsical stacked cabin looks like something out of a children's book.

A model of a galactic embassy is hidden in plain sight along the highway, proposed by a UFO religion to find the aliens that created life on Earth.

A speck of nature and art in one of San Francisco’s most notorious neighborhoods.

A whimsical sensor instrument for Minneapolitans to play on their walks to work.

Scores of vintage street lamps shine along L.A.’s Miracle Mile.

Nature's slip and slide.

Collective dedicated to restoring steam engines.

A storybook European village in Berkeley.

A hands-on traveling collection of the innovative devices of yesteryear.

The evolution of recreational vehicles and motorhomes is on display in the “RV capital of the world."

A French valley with forests so lush it was nicknamed "the Small Amazonia of the Pyrenees."

A hardware store Buddha statue installed to deter vandalism wound up attracting Vietnamese immigrants who came to pray.

This collection of French root art looks like an indoor fairy wonderland.

San Franciscans leave gifts and messages for the magical beings that live behind the tiny, mysterious door installed on a tree in Golden Gate Park.

A wealth of local folk art, antiques, and curios, without ever leaving your car.

A little piece of the Shire is hidden behind a plant nursery in Port Orchard, Washington.

An anthropological theme park that depicts the cultures of around 20 different countries.

People have been living in the cave houses on this Italian hillside since the Neolithic era.

A stranded woman lived alone on this remote island for 18 years, inspiring the great children's novel "Island of the Blue Dolphins."

The oldest family-run luncheonette in New York, last renovated in 1948, still serves food and drinks the old-fashioned way.

A series of modernist treehouse hotel rooms grace the outskirts of an Arctic forest.

An Amazonian hotel is the ultimate treehouse and provides stilt based accommodation.

A tall karst islet popularized by 007.

A 140-year-old castle with underground caves hidden in San Francisco.