Places TheLabRatKing Wants to Go

This gallery of prehistoric red ochre art lines the wall of a scenic segment in Utah's San Rafael Swell.

Local lore holds that Butch Cassidy took an escape route through Red Canyon's sandstone hoodoos after an attempted murder.

Jurassic Park—A Still Life.

A striking, menacing sandstone peak towering above a landscape that's equal parts Mordor and the Moon.

One of the world’s largest collections of petroglyphs records 2,000 years of human activity.

This quiet park's strange sedimentary spires were named after Kodak's color film.

The largest island on the great salt lake is home to curious creatures and strange stories.

Largest collection of mounted dinosaur specimens in the world.

Hundreds of drawings left by the land's previous inhabitants remain mysterious.

Once a menacing challenge for trailblazers, this trail is now the most scenic drive in Utah.

Despite its name, this route in southern Utah offers a heavenly day trip.

Come for the speed, leave in love with the desert.

An earthwork sculpture built by Robert Smithson in the Great Salt Lake only reemerges during drought.

Here, at the “world’s longest art gallery,” you’ll find forty miles of ancient petroglyphs and pictographs.

Chilly air billows out from the entrance of an abandoned mine on a steep hillside, providing a refuge for Ice Age fauna and flora.

This central Nevada cave is the spiritual home of ancient and enigmatic pictographs.

Located in the remote Monitor Valley, this travertine bowl contains a scalding pool of water.

This dry lake bed contains the oldest known petroglyphs in North America.

An ill-fated attempt to grow wheat in the sagebrush steppe of northeastern Nevada.

An improbable waterfall springs from an orange-white cliff face, tumbling into the headwaters of the Virgin River above Zion National Park.

This once-popular otherworldly landscape was formed by one of the largest volcanic eruptions in history.

A small museum packed with specimens from important fossil sites and minerals from historical pegmatite quarries.

The 25-million-year-old cavities have perplexed people for decades.

One man's personal collection of more than 2,000 creepy-crawlies from around the world.