Places nomadandwitch Wants to Go

An abandoned theme park with a strange and tumultuous past.

Prehistoric animals decorate this popular outdoor park.

This library and museum is dedicated to the life and literature of the Indianapolis native author.

The world’s largest truck stop includes a barber shop, chiropractor, and a huge museum with antique trucks.

Life-size figures portray depot attendants, train crew, and passengers frozen in time at the oldest railroad station in Arkansas.

One man's vision and a labor of love of many.

European castle ruins in an American state park are actually the product of death and grief.

Patrick Dougherty's fantastic living tree sculptures, mind-blowing but temporary.

A once-booming Mississippi River town with a history of racial violence is now eerie and mostly abandoned.

Once an ambitious nature spa, these forest ruins now provide a serene monument to failure.

Curious cave that stays a cool 56 degrees all year long.

Erosion and time have created a naturally-formed water park.

The history of funerals and funerary customs.

A late sculptor's last project was to turn this abandoned cement factory into a castle-themed amusement park.

A big museum full of little worlds.

An urban forest overtakes what was the greatest failure of utopic urban housing.

A floating museum that was sunk by a flood and left to rot in the tides.

A kitschy, creepy St. Louis mainstay.

For two weeks every June, fireflies in the Smoky Mountains perform an astonishing light show.

One of many gator theme parks, abandoned in the sugar fields of South Florida.

A giant 400-acre preserve in North Florida for displaced wolves.

This ancient sinkhole-turned-healing-pool is a treasure trove of archeological discoveries and may even be the Fountain of Youth.

For 32 years the famous Ringling Bros circus troupe spent winters in this sunny spot in Florida.

A much more welcome kind of snowbird vacationer, manatees camp out in these springs every winter.