This huge stew pot is the focal point of the "Community Soup" event, which honors tradition and soup.

One extremely determined man's homemade universe.

Meet the "Green Monster" of Monico, Wisconsin.

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

A fairytale art house in the middle of Wisconsin.

The highest point in Wisconsin is capped by two towers that are not as mythic as Tolkien's but provide much better views.

The center of the only hemisphere that awards visitors with a commemorative coin.

Museum with an extensive collection of Cray supercomputers and related artifacts.

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

A plaque marks a former safe house on the secret route, now hidden next to a McDonald's.

This unauthorized stone mermaid was secretly carved out of public stone before being permanently preserved.

A hollow cement depiction of time's inexorable effect on the human body.

A small abandoned and abused cemetery that has become a magnet for ghost hunters.

Giant six-pack could provide one person a six-pack a day for 3,351 years.

These molds for fiberglass statues have formed an eerie, accidental sculpture park.

A Museum of Holography frozen in 1974.

Assemble a masterpiece at the first and only North American school exclusively dedicated to mosaic art.

This awkward aquarium sculpture is one of the strangest statues in Chicago.

In Chicago, a pizza-enthusiast has opened a museum dedicated to the history of pizza.

Once at the center of U.S. finance, the historic Trading Room was meticulously recreated piece by piece and rebuilt in the Art Institute.

One-of-a-kind preserved ruins of an abandoned 1880s church in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood.

These chunky stone towers out in Lake Michigan are the key to Chicago’s drinking water.

These abandoned grain silos and tunnels are an urban exploration dream.

This cheerfully-named branch of the Chicago River is the fetid result of years of blood, entrails, and meatpacking waste.