Battle Creek Executive at Kellogg Field

On the field at KAZO. One of America's great aviation museums — over 100 aircraft including an SR-71B Blackbird trainer (one of only two SR-71s with dual cockpits), an F-117 Nighthawk, a P-40 Warhawk, an SBD Dauntless Helldiver in flying restoration. Multiple full-motion flight simulators and a paratrooper simulator make it especially good for kids. The Restoration Hangar lets visitors watch volunteers actively rebuilding aircraft — including ongoing work on a Curtis JN-4 Jenny. Two campuses connected by shuttle. Aviation pilgrimage destination.

A jewel of Indiana's state park system on the shore of Lake James. The legendary refrigerated toboggan track — a quarter-mile of banked, twisting ice — runs Thanksgiving through February and is one of the most unique winter attractions in the Midwest. Speeds hit 35-40 mph. The Potawatomi Inn (1927) overlooks the lake — a great fly-in stay. Steuben County's 101 lakes form a glittering blue maze from above; this is some of the best summer flying in Indiana. The park is named after Chief Simon Pokagon, the last hereditary chief of the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi.

The third-largest Amish settlement in the US. From 1500ft, the landscape transforms into a patchwork of small, immaculately maintained farms with no power lines. Horse-drawn buggies on country roads are visible on clear days. The contrast between Amish farmland and surrounding modern agriculture is striking from above — smaller fields, more diverse crops, and farmsteads clustered closer together. Tuesday and Wednesday are auction days in Shipshewana when the town fills with buggies.

In the mid-1980s the West Michigan Horticultural Society in Grand Rapids was searching for land to build a botanical conservatory. They asked Frederik Meijer — the founder of the Meijer grocery chain, who had been buying property east of the city for one of his stores — to donate a parcel. Meijer had already bought a wooded tract along an East Beltline creek for a new supercenter. He looked at the land, decided to put his store elsewhere, and donated 70.7 acres for the garden in January 1991. He and his wife Lena then led a $13 million capital campaign, donated their personal sculpture collection, and opened the gardens to the public in April 1995. Thirty years later, Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park has been named the best sculpture park in the United States by USA Today's 10Best readers three years running. The Art Newspaper ranks it among the 100 most-visited art museums in the world. The campus is now 158 acres. The 30-acre outdoor sculpture park, added in 2002, holds 300 sculptures from artists including Rodin, Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Mark di Suvero, Anish Kapoor, Louise Bourgeois, Claes Oldenburg, Richard Serra, Edgar Degas, Ai Weiwei, and Magdalena Abakanowicz. Nina Akamu's 24-foot bronze "The American Horse" — completed from Leonardo da Vinci's original 1493 design that was never cast in his lifetime — is the campus icon and the photograph everyone takes. The 15,000-square-foot, five-story Lena Meijer Tropical Conservatory is Michigan's largest tropical conservatory. The annual butterfly exhibit (March-April) is the largest temporary butterfly exhibition in the nation — visitors walk among thousands of free-flying butterflies from around the world. The 8-acre Richard and Helen DeVos Japanese Garden, designed by Hoichi Kurisu and opened June 10, 2015, integrates contemporary sculpture (including a 10-foot Anish Kapoor granite work) with traditional zen elements. The outdoor 1,900-seat amphitheater hosts a major concert series each summer. For a state most Americans don't associate with high art, this is an outlier. Grand Rapids has the country's best outdoor sculpture collection because Fred Meijer skipped one supercenter and gave the land away.