Despite high gas prices, rising global temperatures, a lack of fuel-efficient, low-emissions vehicles, and a decaying-to-useless intercity train system, are you still planning a summer vacation in the upcoming weeks? 

If you are, the people at Good magazine would like to suggest a wonderful addendum to your route:  a few of the nation’s most infamous man-made ecological disaster sites.  There’s the floating mass of plastic in the Pacific that we reported on earlier, an underground coal fire in Pennsylvania, and the ever-popular Berkeley Pit in Butte, Montana, which is so toxic it kills flocks of migrating geese foolhardy enough to land on it, and was recently termed, without a hint of sarcasm, as a very “romantic” place by the author.

Given the government’s recent ecological laxity, I feel like these disaster sites make excellent additions to traditional touristy stops like the Petrified Forest, Grand Canyon, and Four Corners.  With a few exceptions they’re all right off major interstates or already-popular tourist locales, and serve as potent reminders of the importance of environmental protection.