The Idaho Potato Museum in Blackfoot, Idaho-----This spud-centric destination offers much more than the inevitable backdrop for your next holiday-card photo. Home to the world's largest potato chip (or crisp, if we're being technical, since it's a Pringle), a cafe serving every potato-related delicacy you can imagine (and many you surely haven't), a Potato Lab teeming with hands-on science experiments and all the history you can dig, the Idaho Potato Museum is the single-subject stop you didn't know you needed. Have you ever visited this museum?

Gator Chateau in Jennings, Louisiana-----Eco-conscious swamp tours are an excellent way to spend a day or two, but let's be honest: Some of us just dream of holding a baby gator. For that very specific experience, head 170 miles west of New Orleans to the Jeff Davis Parish Visitor Center, where the Gator Chateau — a hands-on educational facility that collaborates with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries — raises hatchlings from the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge. (When the gators reach a length of 7 to 7.5 feet, they're released back into the Refuge.) Visits from the public are free, and visitors can hold baby gators under the supervision of gator handlers. At present, the facility houses four hatchlings, nine alligators and Pierre, an 86-year-old alligator snapping turtle. The dream is alive. Have you ever visited this museum?

Mill Ends Park in Portland, Oregon-----Recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the World's Smallest Dedicated Park, Mill Ends Park — which boasts a total area of 452 square inches — is located in the median strip of SW Naito Parkway in downtown Portland. The micro-recreation area was inspired by a columnist for the Oregon Journal, who wrote a popular column about the park's "events" after World War II, and it's been an official city park since St. Patrick's Day 1976. Mill Ends has featured a swimming pool and diving board for butterflies, statues and a miniature Ferris wheel ("brought in by a normal-sized crane," per the Parks and Recreation Department) and hosted concerts, picnics and rose plantings. If you're visiting Portland and have a few minutes to spare, we would note that "I once ran 30 laps around a city park without stopping for water" is a pretty solid brag. Have you ever visited this park?

Doll's Head Trail in Atlanta, Georgia-----The folk-art extravaganza known as Doll's Head Trail — a 1.6-mile forested section of an urban nature trail in southeast Atlanta's Constitution Lakes Park — starts with what Atlanta Trails calls a "charming little doll arm pointing you in the right direction." It was born in 2011 when a local carpenter named Joel Slaton began making offbeat installations with discarded items, such as toys, fishing gear and construction materials he found while hiking. The ever-changing array now features contributions from countless other artists, and it's also home to snakes, of course. Have you ever visited this park?

The Georgia Guidestones in Elberton, Georgia-----East of Atlanta at the highest point in Elbert County, a very different array has been puzzling visitors since its completion in 1980. Commissioned by a man who went by the pseudonym of Robert C. Christian and composed of 28-ton slabs of local Pyramid Blue Granite, the Georgia Guidestones — also known as "America's Stonehenge" — are sandblasted with 10 cryptic guidelines for humanity repeated in eight languages and positioned to serve as a crude astronomical calendar. Whether the mysterious messages are sinister or helpful could have more to do with who's reading them than why they were written; the stones themselves simply say that they were sponsored by "A Small Group of Americans Who Seek The Age Of Reason." The rest is up to your imagination. Have you ever visited this exhibit?