Places nejuum Wants to Go

This lush 12-acre site was once named the finest Japanese garden in North America.

This cheerfully-named branch of the Chicago River is the fetid result of years of blood, entrails, and meatpacking waste.

This deceivingly ordinary warehouse hides an enormous collection of pop culture treasures.

A plaque marks a former safe house on the secret route, now hidden next to a McDonald's.

A river with some unusual, and occasionally dangerous, habits.

Half-sized replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa built to honor Galileo.

No one knows how many bodies are in this vault in a Chicago public park.

Former bath house turns gastropub.

A small abandoned and abused cemetery that has become a magnet for ghost hunters.

These mansions date back to Chicago's days as a brewer's paradise.

The mysterious white squirrels of this Illinois city are treated like sacred cows.

A curious collection of miniatures in a quiet corner of the Chicago Children's Museum.

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

A European-style bath house in Chicago.

What was once the second largest steel mill in the US is now a sprawling complex of modern ruins.

A replica viking ship from the Chicago World's Fair is still in dry dock in an Illinois park.

A chance to follow in the footsteps of the word's most legendary animator.

The final resting place of the world's first nuclear reactor.

In the Shawnee National Forest, amazing rock formations peer through the treeline.

Oversized statues are just the tip of this nostalgic Americana roadside attraction.

What may be America's largest classic video game arcade lurks inconspicuously in a Chicago suburb.

Once one of the world's great cities, Cahokia was a place of religious worship, trade and mass human sacrifice before being mysteriously abandoned.

This grave in a ghost town cemetery marks the death of a witch on a day that never happened.

A little-known subterranean street runs under some of the best-known buildings in Chicago's River North.