Places SamWPiano Wants to Go

The menacing creature had a tremendous influence on the local culture before being exposed as a hoax.

Statue dedicated to the star of an old television show.

According to the legend, this strikingly beautiful hill has miraculous healing powers.

The bugs crawling down the front of this office building are almost as big as a '68 VW Beetle.

One of Frank Lloyd Wright's final works was this UFO church.

A circus of light and sound forms a sensory ode to an iconic train that will never pass through town again.

A metal ring in the middle of the road marks the exact spot where the Soviet satellite crash-landed in 1962.

Over thousands of years, this slot canyon was carved out of the bed of an ancient lake.

"Iron Age" creatures fill this huckster's rusted metal sculpture garden.

A remote hill on a stretch of country road where the laws of physics are defied... or so it seems.

Five acres of divinely inspired folk art.

Vikings and Evangelicals have both had a hand in this replica medieval church.

This pebble beach is so beautiful that taking its rocks is against the law.

Robots, lasers, and whoopee cushions, oh my!

"Looks so real, it's scary!"

The last remaining vestige of a popular 1999 public art display.

Chicago’s last original drive-in restaurant is a family-run hot dog joint that started in 1948.

The Reagan Peace Garden at Eureka College features a chunk of the Berlin Wall.

Burial site of the notorious Chicago gangster.

A board game enthusiast's love for the game, memorialized forever.

This carved armchair marks the final resting place for two pals in the Chicago suburbs.

This colorful monument commemorates a little-known story from the life of Abraham Lincoln.

Over 120 years ago, the original boardgame that inspired Monopoly was invented in this small Illinois town.

A museum and gift shop in a small Illinois town commemorates the work of E.C. Segar and the local figures on whom he based his characters.