Obscure Places to Add to Your Travel Bucket List
I have a plethora of countries and exotic locations on my travel bucket list, as most people do. Many of them are the places that everyone wants to visit: Iceland, Scotland, Switzerland, New Zealand, Japan…just to name a few. But there are a handful of places on my travel bucket list that I would consider obscure locations since not many other people I talk to also have them on their bucket list.
Inspired by my Utah bucket list written a few years ago (I’ve checked some of those places off the list since then!) and my Idaho bucket list I shared last year, this is a random list of obscure places I want to visit in Idaho as well as other locations around the world. I have a weird fascination with these places and figured I’d share them to maybe inspire you to add them to your own travel bucket list!
6 Random and Cool Obscure Places to Add to Your Bucket List
1. Big Idaho Potato Hotel
The Big Idaho Potato Hotel is at the top of my list of places to stay! It’s the perfect kitschy Airbnb located in the middle of nowhere about 30 minutes south of Boise, and it’s basically my dream—it’s literally A GIANT POTATO MADE INTO A HOTEL!!! (Kinda, it’s just one room, haha.) Plus, there’s a luxurious bathroom (not in the potato) and a cute, friendly lil cow that lives on site. I’m dying to do a staycation here but Korri isn’t convinced…yet. Working on it. 😉 (The host also converted an old fire lookout in the mountains of north Idaho into an Airbnb!)
2. Wallace, Idaho
The town of Wallace might be the most random location on my bucket list and yet is one of the places I want to visit most! Wallace is located in the Silver Valley of north Idaho, east of Coeur d’Alene along I-90. The entire town is on the National Register of Historic Places! I mainly want to visit because Wallace is the self-proclaimed center of the universe. Other things to do in Wallace include silver mine tours, visiting mining museums, checking out local breweries, and many outdoor activities, including biking the Route of the Hiawatha trail.
3. Point Roberts, Washington
In all of my random Google Mapping (wherein I zoom in on Google Maps and find cool places to visit), I stumbled across a small piece of land in northwest Washington state that is bordered on 3 sides by water and 1 side by Canada: Point Roberts. That’s right, the only way into Point Roberts by land is through Canada. It’s a tiny piece of land with only around permanent 1,000 residents that was not known when the border between Canada and the U.S. was made in the 1800s. It’s so random that I must visit someday! (It’s a short detour from the Tsawwassen ferry terminal in British Columbia, and I’m disappointed my parents didn’t take us when we were there many years ago, haha.) This article (via Slate) goes more in depth about the town’s history and the nuances of living there!
4. Utqiagvik, Alaska (formerly known as Barrow)
I’ve had a weird fascination with Utqiagvik (formerly known as Barrow) for years—mostly because it’s the northernmost point in the entire U.S.! Korri thinks it’s very strange that I want to visit, and I don’t just want to fly up there and fly back: I’d like to stay at least a night up there. Winters are brutal, as you probably expect (no sun and freezing weather!), but I don’t think summers would be too bad? You wouldn’t see the northern lights in the summer, though, as the sun is up all day long!
5. Azores
The Azores are a volcanic archipelago of nine Portuguese islands located in the north Atlantic! I’m obsessed with its geography: stunning, lush foliage with huge cliffs that end right at the ocean. Plus hydrangeas for as far as the eye can see. It really looks so idyllic. It doesn’t even seem to be that bad of a haul from the U.S., as there are direct flights from Boston and Newark.
6. Montenegro
Croatia might be on your bucket list if you haven’t already gone, and it’s definitely on my bucket list, but have you considered its neighbor, Montenegro? Even since I saw photos when a friend visited years ago, I’ve been wanting to visit myself! You might be able to tell by now that I’m a sucker for beautiful scenery and breathtaking cliffs/mountains nestled right up against bodies of water. Montenegro has all of that and more!
I’d love to know: What are some of the obscure places on your travel bucket list? Any incredible roadside attractions I should know about? (I’m a sucker for those! The cheesier, the better. 😉)