Places Mama Shotts Wants to Go

This historic collection of Native Alaskan artifacts was resurrected through a partnership between the WPA and tribal artisans.

The "Gateway to the Arctic" connects Barrow's indigenous population with the sea and its traditional industry: whaling.

An abandoned aircraft sits submerged in a lake in the Alaska wilderness.

North America's first frozen mummified remains of an ice age steppe bison, the 36,000 year-old mummy named "Blue Babe."

A rare kind of blue bear can be found chiefly in the national park that shares their name.

Massive mounds of golden sand look like a desert landscape randomly plopped in an Arctic forest.

This ghostly Alaska village still clings to a steep cliffside despite having been abandoned for over 50 years.

A trading post in the North Pole where children send letters.

The ruins of this Alaska gold mine form a gorgeous ghost town.

Colorful boxes placed over the dead are left to rot and crumble.

Four-story concrete hotel never opened to customers.

A rare chance to get up close and personal with a 13-mile ribbon of ice near downtown Juneau.

Upside-down trees serve as natural flower pots in this hanging garden of Alaska.

The ghostly remains of what was once the world's richest copper mine.

Gorgeous cave resemble a winter wonderland.

This frozen tunnel in central Alaska is both an engineering feat and a valuable climate classroom.

The king of U.S. high points towers over every other peak on the continent.

Mind-blowing carvings and fantasy ice scenes grace the largest year-round ice environment in the world.

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

Breathtakingly blue walls shimmer inside the "Glacier Behind the Town."

A metal menagerie fills the yard of this museum and gallery, the work of Montana artist Bill Ohrmann.

This six-building complex is the home of the world's largest steer.

Multiple monuments to a grizzled old mutt that survived the landscape of Butte's treacherous Berkeley Pit.

This small museum is home to some of the oldest and best-preserved dinosaur specimens found in Montana.