Places Michael Barera Wants to Go

One of the world's premier laboratories for hydraulic engineering research takes full advantage of the water's power.

This water tower has been a staple of the Rochester skyline since 1931.

1887 era Russian Orthodox church in Minneapolis.

America's silhouette includes 100 square miles of wilderness jutting into Canada thanks to an old mapmaking error.

This iconic water tower and failed bandstand is open for panoramic views once a year.

A futuristic climate change study is nestled deep within this public land.

A 115-year-old restored German dining hall awaits those who venture beneath the Minnesota State Capitol.

A Borgesian work of art that may blur the line between fiction and reality a little too convincingly.

Grant Wood painted some of his most famous works of art at this studio.

Hidden in the grounds of the Fort Dodge Museum is a "real" and terrifying petrified giant.

The only museum in the world dedicated to the history of sprint car racing, next to one of the country's most historic dirt tracks.

The farm toy capital of the world hosts a museum filled with toy tractors dating back to the late 1800s.

The highest point in Iowa, while not that impressive to mountain states, has earned its own monuments.

In rural Iowa, an imported 19th-century windmill overlooks an unlikely enclave of Danish culture.

The world's only three-story rotary jail is now a museum to a bizarre trend in prison design.

An immersive environment that is part haunted house, part choose-your-own-adventure, and part jungle gym.

In a 345-million-year-old cave that's 200 feet underground, dinner awaits.

An abandoned facility that has become a place of ritualistic satanic worship, or so rumor has it.

Decommissioned experimental solar facilities that pioneered solar energy technology.

A museum dedicated to a sea that should have never been.

A rococo retro-futurist future-rustic vernacular between yesterday’s tomorrow and the future that never was.

The biggest pinball arcade in the world has over 600 pinball machines, and 300 arcade machines.

The last of its kind in the country.

A showcase of engineering might that was also symbolic of westward expansion.