Places Jessica Leigh Hester Wants to Go

A former taxidermist has turned his old shop into a folk art mecca.

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

The world's third-largest scale model of the planets.

The first and only museum dedicated to stained glass and horology opened outside of Chicago in 2017.

Eclectic collection of rare and beautiful stones in a historic home.

Located in a beautifully restored ice house, this museum is the result of decades of hard work and devotion to the craft of plumbing.

Taxidermy and miniatures come together to create this unique museum.

A desert that rolls right up to the ocean, where it's so dry animals live off the fog.

An otherworldly, fossil-rich cobble beach holds Viking graves, cairns, and other remains.

The plants form a living library and laboratory for researchers and students at Michigan State University.

These gardens recreate unique and endangered Michigan habitats.

Over a thousand feet beneath the Detroit streets is a subterranean metropolis few are allowed to enter.

The rusted remains of an ill-fated freighter lie just off the coast of South Manitou Island in Lake Michigan.

This lighthouse and shipwreck museum keep a torch burning for the memory of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald.

During WWII the U.S. Navy conducted primitive drone strikes on this Lake Michigan lighthouse.

Covering 37 subterranean acres, this Armillaria gallic is a famous fungus with its own festival.

Legs Inn provides Polish food, a cornucopia of Odawa artwork, wood carvings, and mounted deer heads.

This lone tree and dramatic sandstone outcropping are so beloved by Michiganders they can be found on one of the state’s coins.

This protected area in Lake Huron contains some of the world’s best-preserved shipwrecks.

A popular place to pick up prehistoric coral fossils from the time when Michigan was an ocean.

Museum dedicated to the art of cutting and polishing stones.

Nevada's largest cactus collection stands outside a candy mogul's small factory.

The longest living non-clonal organisms on Earth.

A very big rock just plopped down in the New England woods.