This shifting North Carolina sand dune is an odd little desert surrounded by oceanic forest life.

The wooden house where the jazz great learned to play the piano.

Perhaps the oldest vine in North America, this sprawling plant helps make a sweet wine.

Wander through more than 20,000 square feet filled with an amazing collection of orchids.

This ceremonial mound is one of the first officially recognized Native American historical sites in North Carolina.

This Transylvania County city is home to a rare white squirrel population that is descended from an escaped carnival animal.

This scented city oasis was a labor of love.

This nine-story building can be played like an instrument.

This research center for rare prosimians is studying how they sleep to help prolong human life.

The highest point in North Carolina and the United States east of the Mississippi River, Mount Mitchell is named after argumentative explorer Elisha Mitchell.

This North Carolina museum is keeping the pinball craze alive, with a little Space Invaders on the side.

One of the best places to see feral Colonial Spanish Mustangs in the United States.

North Carolina's finest examples of Native American pictographs have survived for 5,000 years.

Garden dedicated to native carnivorous plants and site of huge flytrap heist.

Gnarled canopies of pink and purple wildflowers arch over the trail to the summit.

The highest point in Tennessee, Clingmans Dome bears witness to the ravages of one type of insect.

This museum gives tribute to the underappreciated "Down-South Submarine."

This small museum dedicated to the painful memory of segregation is essentially a time capsule.

A hobby born from insomnia has turned into a hangar full of objects that have been be-buttoned by the Button King.

North America's oldest authentic African Village.

The language and heritage of a nearly forgotten culture can still be explored in this Southern enclave.

One man's extraordinary topiary garden in a small South Carolina town.

This woodland architectural installation acts as a camera obscura for the heavens.

These eerie outliers of the lightning bug family glow a mysterious blue color.