Striking a triumphant pose before a cool slash into the water. (Instagram/brookes_cunningham) Nestled in Texas Hill Country is an enchanting creek with a mysterious and dangerous secret, a swimming hole that gives new meaning to the term. About an hour outside of Austin, just north of the Village of Wimberley is the Jacob’s Well Natural Area, home to Jacob’s Well, a 140-foot deep well cradled in Cypress Creek. The spot is a prime location for thrill seekers and people looking...

A little fog turns this once active greenhouse into an atmospheric dreamscape. (Johnny Joo Photography) Photographer Johnny Joo loves urban exploration and when nature reclaims abandoned buildings he comes running. In the Ohio countryside he found a massive greenhouse that Mother Nature turned into what Johnny calls “a mad house.” From 2012 to 2014 Johnny travelled to this site to photograph the ever-changing and mysterious ruins of a once active greenhouse. "It's wild how fast nature can reclaim a space...

A miner carries sulfur from the crater of Ijen volcano complex in East Java, Indonesia. Miners carry the solidified yellow sulfur blocks from the volcano's crater floor to the rim for as many hours a day as they can tolerate, paid by the kilogram of sulfur they extract. (Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images) Is this the most dangerous job in the world? The sulfur miners of East Java, Indonesia work in a crater of the active Ijenvolcano complex, braving toxic fumes and...

Guitar-Shaped Forest -33.867886, -63.987. This huge forest-shaped guitar is a memorial to a farmer's lost love. Córdoba, Argentina. (Photo: Google Earth) Google Earth has proved to be not just a virtual globe, but a place to feast your eyes on never-before-seen sights around the world from a bird’s-eye perspective. Some of these surprising images shownatural phenomena, others reveal fleeting moments captured in nature and some are simply a familiar view from an unfamiliar perspective. One site onthe lush farmlands near...

Inside an abandoned film school in Ohio. (Johnny Joo) Photographer and urban explorer Johnny Joo says he has always enjoyed uncovering and shedding light on hidden places. In his most recent exploration, Joo discovered an abandoned film school in his home state of Ohio. “This particular location was found out of a random drive into town, where I thought it was just a regular, ordinary school, but found myself to be completely wrong, in the best way possible,” Joo told...

Plane Turned Into a McDonald's - New Zealand While aircraft manufacturer Boeing forecasts that the number of commercial aircraft flying the world's skies will double in the next two decades, as many as 12,000 aircraft will be decommissioned by 2020, according to the Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association. What happens to these airplanes? Many will be abandoned at the desert lands that usually make up airplane graveyards, but some will be purchased or scrapped for parts to be recycled, sometimes resulting...

As China's tourism industry experiences a boom,the country is poised to become the world’s second largest travel and tourism economy after the United States by 2015, according to a report from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC). The increasing number of foreign visitors to China may be attributed to the country's wealth of natural, cultural and historical wonders (China has the second-greatest number of World Heritage Sites). But while thousands of tourists visit the Forbidden City, the Great Wall...

Grouse Mountain Skyride, Vancouver, Canada Some of the world's most breathtaking views are only accessible through hours of hiking up mountains or through forests, but cable cars (also known as gondolas and aerial tramways) cut travel time to minutes. From an open-air, double-decker cable car in the Swiss Alps to a rotating tramway that brings you up sheer cliffs in a California canyon, these cable cars offer some of the most thrilling rides in the sky. The Grouse Mountain Skyride...

Patient Room. Taunton State Hospital, 2008. (Jeremy Harris) When photographer Jeremy Harris learned about the existence of an abandoned asylum in Buffalo, NY, he knew he had to document it himself. Harris got the opportunity to travel from his home in San Francisco to visit family in Buffalo months after he read about the asylum on a website. He managed to find the building and decided to see explore the decrepit space. The asylum was eerie, the weather-beaten structure was...

A replica of Australia's Sydney Opera House, one of the attractions at Window of the World theme park in Shenzhen, China. The 118-acre park features replicas of about 130 of the world's most famous landmarks squeezed into one location. (Luke Casey) In 2013, a British luxury website made the news when it offered what may have been the world's most expensive trip—a $1.5 million vacation package to visit all World Heritage sites (1,007 as of 2014), including the Great Pyramids...

French photographer Sarah Martinet flew over Landmannalaugar, Langisjór, and Lakagígar in Iceland for her photo series. (Sarah Martinet) French photographer Sarah Martinet decided she wanted to capture Iceland in a new and unique way, so she took to the sky. “I decided to photograph Iceland from the air; I wanted to show a different point of view of this country,” explained Martinet. “Shooting images from a plane reveals to us the world from a different angle. It gives graphic images...

The U.S. National Park Service is turning 98 years old today. To celebrate, all park entrance fees (including commercial tour fees and transportation entrance fees) have been waived for the day at the 133 parks that currently charge for admission. (MORE:Going Wild – 6 National Parks to Visit) The park system stretches across 84 million acres, covering 401 sites including national monuments, battlefields, military parks, lakeshores, seashores and rivers. In 2013, the park system, which includes national monuments and historic...

10. Amur River - China and Russia Called the "arteries of our planet," rivers have shaped the world for ages, providing habitat and food for wildlife, linking remote cities and villages and providing travel routes for exploration. But the iconic waterways on this list, most of which wind through multiple countries and time zones, are also majestic in their beauty. Click through the pages to learn about the world's 10 longest rivers and how to cruise some of the most...