Places Laura Andersen Wants to Go

A brief journey through early 19th-century pioneer life across Linn County.

A beautiful 62-acre Catholic shrine and botanical garden.

Portland had a unique approach to Cold War-era protections.

One of the world's tallest, oldest, and most disgusting chocolate cascades.

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

A roaring, awe-inspiring double cascade of icy water flows through woodland Oregon like something out of a Tolkien novel.

An extraordinary mixture of natural beauty and man-made phenomena.

This small, rural pioneer cemetery is full of interesting grave markers.

A logging-themed roadside restaurant surrounded by museum-quality machinery and artifacts from the industry's heyday.

Mountain known by the Tillamook Tribe as "the place of the supreme deity."

Where Nor'easters go to die.

This gorgeous beach hides behind two headlands in Oregon's Ecola State Park.

A massive sea stack famous for its appearance in The Goonies.

Home of Jake the Alligator Man, the mummified remains of a cigar smoking, cross-dressing celebrity of the Northwestern coast.

100-year-old shipwreck you can walk up to at low tide.

This graveyard is the eternal home of many brave pioneers who settled the Great Northwest.

A Roman-style column in Oregon hides a spiral staircase inside.

The lush coastal city of Astoria is riddled with forgotten secret sidewalks.

A building that was once a general store, a speakeasy, and a newspaper office now holds a small gallery filled with New Orleans photography.

This Garden District mansion was built to be bigger and grander than its original owner's former partner turned rival.

After the oysters have been shucked, and the restaurant's been shuttered, the terrazzo sidewalk from the 1940s is all that remains.

A serene but haunting memorial to protective wetland lost, the absence of which directly damaged the Lower 9th Ward following Hurricane Katrina.

This quaint museum in a long-running workshop is dedicated to a fixture in New Orleans lighting.

An architectural experiment in the Lower Ninth Ward, this row house is capable of floating as high as the Katrina floodwaters.