Places Erin Johnson Wants to Go

The magic's in the hole!

A plaque outside the San Jose airport commemorates the insect's arrival to the West Coast.

A wunderkammer of exoticism immortalized by Tom Waits.

A taxidermied stork with an arrow through its neck proved that birds migrate.

Started as a kitchen garden, now the second largest botanical garden in the world.

Home to what locals claim is the largest whale skeleton in Southeast Asia, which is worshiped yearly.

A well-preserved Ancestral Puebloan ruin tucked beneath a desert cliff.

A repository of Pasadena history.

The architect of this fanciful complex called it an "oasis for humanity and nature in a sea of rational houses."

On a quiet suburban street stands a peculiarly decorated house covered in mosaics.

A concrete block embedded with thousands of pulled teeth was created by a local dentist to memorialize his dog.

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 so-called "Statue of Liberty of Los Angeles" is on a one mutant mission to keep L.A. weird.

Italian cave with exceptional acoustics and an unsavory history.

An eccentric home in Sicily turns heads on a regular basis.

An abandoned set from the 1980 film "Popeye," claimed and repurposed as a theme park by creative locals.

"Stairs of the Turks", a chalky white cliff eroded conveniently into stairs, allowing for easy pillaging.

An architect transformed this abandoned cement factory into his castle-like workshop.

This stuffed pigeon of war had the very serious name "John Silver" until he lost a leg in battle.

A heroic pigeon that, through a barrage of gunfire, delivered a message that saved over 100 lives in World War I.

The taxidermied remains of Charles Dickens' pet raven, which helped inspire one of Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poems.

A decorated war pigeon stands guard in eternal taxidermied rest at his alma mater.

The remains of Martha, the last known passenger pigeon, serve as a tool to educate about conservation.