Places richkraetsch Wants to Go

This sanguine boulevard was named after a deadly cowboy bar fight.

This multisensory alley has the ability to remind bustling citygoers to stop and smell the roses.

This old steel industry company town has a tradition of parking cars on the sidewalk so people can walk in the narrow streets.

An off-the-beaten-path place to literally hang beneath Milwaukee's Holton Street Bridge.

Behind a modern brick exterior lies the oldest continuously-operating lunch-car diner in the United States.

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

A massive bur oak tree believed to be some 500 years old is the centerpiece of this quiet urban greenspace.

The remnants of Peoria's proud baseball past stand slightly abandoned, but not forgotten.

This baseball diamond was home to the Rockford Peaches, a team featured in the hit film "A League of Their Own."

This former nursery supplied plants for the creation of Chicago's largest park.

One of only two commuter aerial tramways in the United States.

Chicago’s incendiary role in the labor movement.

An unlikely beach paradise of giant sand dunes lies between two lakes just a few minutes from Michigan's cherry country.

A lavender labyrinth so large it’s visible on Google Earth.

The remains of a religious colony, its amusement park, zoo, and baseball empire.

This national park on the shore of Lake Michigan features remarkable dunes that lie at the heart of a Chippewa legend.

An abandoned network of military bunkers and tunnels open for anyone willing to descend into the darkness.

Mysterious ancient petroglyphs carved on a glacial boulder at the tip of Bainbridge Island.

Sweet or salty, super hot or mixed into beer, this is the holy land for all things licorice.

Tour the original street level of Port Angeles, buried underground in 1914.

Rustic natural hot springs in the deciduous rain forest.

A surreal landscape where fanged rocks rise from the ground and the ocean feels like a great mystery.

Four abandoned towers hidden above the Douglas fir forest in Washington.

Two graffiti towers stand like ghosts of Vancouver's World War II-era defensive outpost.