A 24-hour vending machine restocked daily with homemade full-sized pecan pies.

The Grand Canyon of Texas.

A 90-year-old underground water reservoir offers a more industrial kind of tranquility.

Home to the largest urban bat colony in North America, estimated at 1.5 million bats.

A popular swimming hole that hides one of America's most deadly diving spots.

Continuing the tradition of the dime museum in style.

A modernist landscape of water and sci-fi concrete.

An emerald-green grotto just a short trip from Austin.

Hikers can still stroll beneath the long conveyer of this abandoned mining facility hidden in a West Virginia river gorge.

Once connected to the outside world by a single train track, this ghost town is looked after by the National Park Service.

These unusual rooms on wheels are holdovers from the 1960s.

Heron, whitewater rapids, and urban industrialism all add to the beauty of this concrete nature walk.

A sacred site for Native Americans surveyed by George Washington and owned by both King George III and Thomas Jefferson.

Hike amid the palm trees that thrive among Southern California's Indio Hills.

A Swedenborgian glass church surrounded by redwoods sits perched atop a massive landslide area.

The abandoned train depot now doubles as a well-placed rest stop for those who take the road less traveled.

The largest dune field in the Mojave offers a chance of hearing the 'singing sands.'

This sun-scorched lakebed contains samples of half the natural elements known to humankind.

One of the most unusual geological features, recognizable from a dozen hit movies.

The lowest point in North America is home to an undrinkable pool surrounded by fields of geometric salt flats.

"Only the devil could play golf here."

Travelers leave tea kettles in a remote part of Death Valley as part of a mysterious, decades-old tradition.

The rocks in this arid basin leave trails of movement behind them.

The highest dunes in California are the most likely place in the area to hear the Singing Sands.