Nestled amidst the serene beauty of North Fork, Long Island, The Shoals emerges as a beacon of luxury and tranquility. Set to open its doors to guests seeking respite and rejuvenation, this newly minted hotel promises an unparalleled experience in one of New York’s most captivating destinations. Situated amidst rolling vineyards, charming villages, and pristine beaches, The Shoals invites travelers to embark on a journey of discovery and relaxation.

At The Shoals, guests can expect a blend of sophistication, comfort, and personalized service. The hotel boasts an array of amenities designed to enhance the guest experience, including thoughtfully appointed guest rooms and suites, each offering modern comforts and coastal-inspired décor. From luxurious bedding and spacious bathrooms to private balconies and breathtaking views of the surrounding landscape, every detail has been meticulously curated to ensure a memorable stay.

In addition to its inviting accommodations, The Shoals features a range of dining options showcasing the flavors of North Fork’s culinary scene. Guests can indulge in farm-to-table cuisine at the hotel’s signature restaurant, sample locally sourced wines at the onsite vineyard, or enjoy al fresco dining on the hotel’s picturesque terrace.

Beyond the confines of the hotel, North Fork beckons with a wealth of attractions and activities waiting to be discovered. Explore the region’s renowned wineries and vineyards, where you can sample award-winning wines and soak in the beauty of the rolling countryside. Take a leisurely stroll through charming villages dotted with quaint shops, art galleries, and farm stands, or spend a day soaking up the sun on one of North Fork’s pristine beaches.

For outdoor enthusiasts, North Fork offers opportunities for hiking, biking, fishing, and water sports, allowing visitors to immerse themselves in the natural beauty of the region. Whether you’re seeking relaxation, adventure, or cultural exploration, North Fork and The Shoals provide the perfect backdrop for an unforgettable summer getaway.

Show human beings a “Keep off the grass” sign, and half of them will step on it. As a species, we’re fascinated by the forbidden. Luckily, there are hundreds of off-limits areas on earth to stoke our curiosity. From Demilitarized Zones and snake-filled islands to secret shrines, shadowy cult campgrounds, haunted houses, and secret military bases that may contain UFOs and aliens, here are 40 of the world’s most forbidden places.

The Global Seed Vault, or Doomsday Vault, is home to over 100 million seeds from all over the world. The repository is located on the Norwegian island of Svalbard and exists in case Mother Nature or humans ever wipe out the plant kingdom by war, disease, or natural disaster.

Speaking of which, the vault sits on high ground to counteract rising sea levels. Should the earth experience a global catastrophe, the Norwegians will save us all by reintroducing extinct flora and food crops. Takk skal du ha or thank you, Norway!

While Indiana Jones found the Ark of the Covenant in Egypt, many believe the Ark and its Ten Commandments lie within the 4th Century Church of our Lady Mary of Zion in Ethiopia. No one is allowed inside, and only one elderly appointed guardian monk (chosen by the predecessor) can view the Ark.

Legend says Crown Prince Menelik I visited his father, King Solomon, in Jerusalem and brought Moses’ stone tablets back to Ethiopia. Some believe the Ark’s power comes from a radioactive meteorite.

Move over, Roswell, Skinwalker Ranch is a hive of paranormal activity and is off-limits to any wannabe Spooky Mulders out there. Based deep in myth-laden Navajo country in Utah, the ranch is home to UFO sightings, ghostly apparitions, floating orbs, alien skinwalkers, portals to another dimension, and even a gateway to hell!

In 2016, businessman and paranormal investigator Robert Bigelow sold the ranch to Adamantium Real Estate, who blocked roads and set up cameras and barbed wire to keep people out. However, you can check out the History Channel series.

In 1940, 18-year-old Marcel Ravidat’s dog, Robot, ran into a hole in the ground. Marcel and his friends followed Robot into a cave and discovered the Lascaux Caves. They feature over 600 Palaeolithic cave paintings from 20,000 years ago.

The caves were open to the public until 1963, but all those visitors eroded the artworks. The caverns became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1979. Now, you can’t visit the real caves, but you can visit painstakingly created replicas next door.

Unless you’re Dr. Robert Langdon from a Dan Brown novel, the Vatican Apostolic Archive is off-limits. The archives were created in 1612 when Pope Paul V ordered all Church records to be assembled in one place. The mysterious underground catacombs now contain 53 miles worth of shelves and feature documents dating back thousands of years.

Following the success of Angels & Demons, the Vatican opened the Archives to a handful of journalists to dispute what the film said. Now, only researchers with special permission can visit the Vatican Secret Archives.

Area 51 is one of the most forbidden places on the planet. The United States Air Force base and testing ground lies in Nevada, and very little is known about it. It’s undoubtedly a testing ground for top-secret, black-book military aircraft, which would explain why so many people have seen mysterious lights in the sky.

But, rumors persist that the base contains crashed UFOs and aliens. Whatever Area 51 contains, the signs warning of lethal force are enough to keep most people away.

Pravčická Brána is a beautiful natural rock formation that has formed an archway. Lying in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains, it’s one of Czechia’s most scenic and well-known attractions. You used to be able to walk across the natural bridge.

However, in 1982, the authorities forbade visitors from climbing on the natural sandstone archway as it was being eroded and could collapse at any moment. The public ban has stopped fears of a collapse. Pravčická Brána is just as stunning when viewed from nearby with a lovely picnic.

Imagine waking up one morning and seeing a new island forming! That’s what happened in Iceland on November 14th, 1963. Iceland, you see, sits on the Eurasian and North American tectonic plates. The Icelandic people named the new island — which was formed by volcanic activity — Surtsey after Surtr from Norse mythology.

You might recognize him as the Satan-like demon who destroyed Asgard in Thor: Ragnarok. The Icelandic government only allows botanists, biologists, geologists, and vulcanologists onto the UNESCO World Heritage site so they can study the ecosystem without any interference from pesky humans.

Bohemian Grove is a campground in Monte-Rio, California. Every July, an “exclusive gentleman’s club” called the Bohemian Club meets for a top-secret two-week retreat. Members include presidents, prime ministers, high-ranking government officials, and business leaders.

No one knows what strange things occur, but rumors persist of black magic, giant ceremonial bonfires, and men in robes worshiping giant owl shrines. Some say Bohemian Grove is an overgrown frat party — while others are certain it’s a powerful, shadowy cult. Whichever way, if your name’s not down, you’re not getting in!

The Ploutonion, or Pluto’s Gate, lies in Hierapolis, Turkey, and dates back thousands of years. An ancient Greek legend said that no one could survive a visit to the gate belonging to Hades or Pluto, the God of the Underworld. When people sent sparrows in, they never flew out.

In 1965, scientists confirmed extremely high carbon dioxide levels at the site. It’s thought a seismic fault opened up a chamber of deadly gases. One theory says the Oracle of Delphi saw her visions after inhaling similar gases.

The Royal Australian Air Force’s Woomera Test Range is named after a First Nations word for a wooden spear-throwing device. The military test area lies north of Adelaide in South Australia and occupies 47,177 square miles — a space as big as the entire countries of Denmark or Estonia!

The country-sized base is 100% off-limits to the public because it’s a long-range missile testing ground. If you’re off on a hike, wander off course at your peril!

In 1986, Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant’s number four reactor exploded, sending plumes of radioactive clouds into the air. The worker’s town of Pripyat was evacuated, but it was too late. Radioactivity spread across Eastern Europe, and  200,o00 brave souls were involved in the clean-up operation.

The reactor was encased in concrete and later covered. Now, there’s a 1,000 square mile (2,600 square km) exclusion zone around Chornobyl’s ghost town — which will be uninhabitable for the next 20,000 years.

The Grand Shrine of Ise is a Shinto shrine to the solar goddess Amaterasu and home to the Sacred Mirror. Without using a single nail, the shrine is rebuilt every 20 years to symbolize death and rebirth. According to historical records from the Edo Period, 3.6 million people visited the shrine in 50 days in 1625.

Only the Japanese imperial family and priests can visit the holy site. The current High Priestess is former Princess Sayako Kuroda, the daughter of Emperor Emeritus Akihito.

While Hawaii is paradise to some, one island doesn’t allow visitors. Niʻihau Island is off-limits because a Scottish farmer and plantation owner named Elizabeth Sinclair bought the island for $10,000 in 1864. Since then, her descendants, the Robinson family, have owned the 70 square-mile island. As of 2020, only 84 people live there.

In 1952, Hawaii suffered a polio outbreak, so Niʻihau Island was isolated, leading to the nickname Forbidden Island. One can take helicopter tours, but you can’t stay on Niʻihau.

While Saint Patrick banished snakes from Ireland, Brazil’s Snake Island has the opposite problem. Ilha Da Queimada Grande lies about 20 miles from Sao Paulo state and is home to the most snakes anywhere in the world.

They wriggled there during the last ice age when the island was still connected to the mainland and never stopped reproducing. Some estimates say 430,000 snakes live on the 106-acre island, one for every square meter. Indiana Jones and Samuel L. Jackson were happy they stayed away!

Bhangarh Fort is a 16th-century fort built in the Rajasthan state of India. Many tourists admire the red-bricked ruins between sunrise and sunset. But, as soon as the sun sets, you need to run for your life because Bhangarh Fort is one massive haunted house or bhoot bangla.

The Indian government deemed the fort haunted because legends of ghosts, curses, black magic, and the occult persist to this day. Tourists have seen ghostly apparitions and heard ancient music from within the fortress, and two boys who stayed the night never returned.

North and South Brother Islands are small islands in New York City’s East River between the Bronx and Rikers Island. In 1904, the General Slocum steamship sank nearby, and some passengers took refuge on North Brother Island, including a woman called Mary Mallon.

Mary was the first US patient to have typhoid; she infected 50 other people, three of whom succumbed to the fever. She became known as Typhoid Mary. The island became a hospital for people with contagious diseases but is now abandoned.

If you think you haven’t heard of Qin Shi Huang’s Mausoleum, we bet you have. The necropolis is a series of caverns containing objects the First Qin Emperor might have needed in the afterlife, such as an army made of pottery. The site was unearthed in 1974 when archaeologists found the Terracotta Army.

It was built over 38 years, between 246 and 208 BCE, underneath a pyramid-shaped mound. The Chinese government forbids access to the tomb as visitors could destroy the tomb. Some say the caves are booby-trapped.

Lying two-thirds of the way between Madagascar and Antarctica, Heard and McDonald Islands are among the most remote places on earth. They are a two-week boat ride from the nearest land. And before you hire a ship, the Australian territory is banned from the public because of not one but two active volcanoes.

In 2000, satellite imagery picked up a vast lava flow from Mawson Peak. If that’s not enough to keep you away, the weather conditions among Heard Island’s 41 glaciers are atrocious.

Carved into the side of the Granite Mountains in Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah, lies the Mormon Church Secret Vault. The military-style vault was built in 1965 to hold vital church records.

The Granite Mountain Records Vault now holds more than 3.6 billion images, microfilms, and digital media specializing in family records. No one is allowed in without special permission. So why are the Church of Latter Day Saints storing so much information on genealogy, and what do they know that we don’t?

Mezhgorye sits in the Republic of Bashkortostan in Russia’s Ural Mountains. And it’s a complete mystery. Founded in 1979 and also known as Beloretsk 16, it’s a top-secret town surrounded by military outposts under ​​Mount Yamantaw.

Some say Mezhgorye is a nuclear missile site, while the Kremlin claims the site is a bunker for Russian leaders in the event of nuclear war. Either way, if you rock up to the secret town, guards will turn you away.

Fort Knox is the name we conflate with the United States Bullion Depository. The fort is the US Army installation next door. Either way, this Kentucky stash is one of the most heavily guarded places on the planet, as it is home to most of the country’s gold reserves.

The gold vault is contained within a concrete-line granite, reinforced steel building, and multiple combination locks. In the third James Bond film, Goldfinger (1964), 007 and Pussy Galore stop Auric Goldfinger from stealing Fort Knox’s gold reserves.

Poveglia is a small island in the Venetian Lagoon between Venice and Lido in Northern Italy. In the 1700s, people suffering from bubonic plague were sent here to die. In the 1900s, Poveglia became an asylum for the mentally ill, and rumors abound that doctors carried out illegal experiments on the patients.

Today, the island is deserted, mainly because it’s a hotbed for paranormal activity. Some say it’s the most haunted place in Italy. Anyone up for some ghostbusting?

The Dome of the Rock is not only an Islamic shrine at the center of Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque, it’s one of the holiest sites for all the Abrahamic religions. Located within the Temple Mount, the golden-topped dome dates back to the first century and dominates the Jerusalem skyline.

However, not everyone is allowed inside. Non-Muslim visitors cannot enter the building, but they can get a close look from the Temple Mount from Temple Mount. And let’s face facts — it’s impressive enough from the outside.

Mecca in Saudi Arabia is the holiest place for Muslims. In Islam, every adult Muslim must make the haji pilgrimage to the Great Mosque of Mecca once in his or her lifetime. The religious site is “the fountainhead and cradle of Islam,” as it’s the birthplace of Muhammad.

The Quran was first revealed to the prophet at the nearby Mountain of Light. You cannot enter the ancient city if you’re not a follower of the Islamic faith. If non-Muslims enter the historic city, they can expect a hefty fine.

The Korean Demilitarized Zone separates North and South Korea on a line roughly equivalent to the 38th Parallel. The DMZ is 2.5 miles wide and runs for 160 miles across the Korean peninsula.

To the north lies the Communist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, while to the south lies the affluent, technology-rich Republic of Korea. In 2008, a South Korean tourist strayed into the Demilitarized Zone. Needless to say, he didn’t survive.

In 1964, during the civil war between the Turkish and Greek residents of Cyprus, the United Nations created the Attila Line to separate the Greek and Turkish peoples. After they agreed on a ceasefire, only a few thousand farmers were granted permission to live in villages within the zone.

This no-mans-land of barbed-wire fences, concrete walls, watchtowers, anti-tank ditches, and minefields became a ghost town where everything was frozen in time. Today, Cyprus’ Buffer Zone is the last divided capital in Europe.

Morgan Island is also known as Monkey Island due to its colony of monkeys. After a 1979 outbreak of herpes among monkeys in Puerto Rico, 4,000 rhesus monkeys were relocated to this uninhabited island in South Carolina.

For the monkey’s safety (and their own), human beings are prohibited from visiting, and only monkey researchers are allowed to set foot on Morgan Island. That means humans who research monkeys — not actual monkeys who have jobs as scientific researchers. That would be daft.

Metro-2 is Moscow’s secret underground metro system that parallels the city’s public metro but without the beautiful Art Deco touches. It was built in case of a nuclear disaster during the time of the KGB and lies 600 feet underground. The train lines connect government buildings like the Kremlin to the secret service headquarters and the airport.

The FSB, the modern name for the KGB, will neither confirm nor deny its existence. In 1994, the Diggers of the Underground Planet urban exploration group claimed they had found an entrance to Metro-2.

So, you know those underground nuclear bunkers in films like Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Greenland? They’re not real, right? Well, they exist, and Mount Weather Emergency Center is the safest place to be when the machines take over and the bombs drop.

This bunker in Virginia was built during the Cold War to protect government officials and the USA’s national treasures. Unless people need to take shelter, the building is entirely off-limits to everyone except the military, politicians, and FEMA employees.

Tucked away in the Australian Outback, there lies a top-secret military base known as Pine Gap. The joint US-Australian defense facility is a satellite surveillance base just southwest of the town of Alice Springs slap bang in the middle of Australia.

Built during the Cold War, Pine Gap controls satellites that collect information about global airstrikes. Only its 800 employees and government officials are allowed to enter the heavily protected area, but you can check out the Pine Gap series on Netflix.

Royal Air Force Menwith Hill is a Royal Air Force station near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England. It was initially used for intelligence gathering and espionage during the Cold War. Today, the 550-acre facility is the largest electronic monitoring station in the world.

It acts as a communications intercept and missile warning site and is home to the ECHELON surveillance program. Despite various attempts to determine the purpose of those eerie radar domes or radomes, the public has no clue what happens at Menwith Hill.

The Coca-Cola recipe is one of America’s biggest secrets. In 2011, the world’s most famous drinks company placed the closely guarded recipe inside a vault on the grounds of the World of Coca-Cola in Atlanta. You can visit the vault, but good luck trying to get inside.

You’d need to make it past the armed guards, the hand scanner, and the tricky combination lock. Even then, who’s to say the Coca-Cola recipe is really inside? Only one way to find out, hey?

Disney Club 33 is a secret organization created by Walt Disney to entertain his business associates in VIP lounges. Walt never got to use his exclusive club because he passed away in 1966 before it was completed. Membership costs $25,000 upfront plus $10,000 a year.

The site was originally at 33 Royal Street, Disneyland, but it now lies above the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction. Though many conspiracy theories persist around Disney Club 33, it seems it’s just an expensive dining club.

Very few human beings have visited the Mariana Trench. The earth’s deepest oceanic trench lies between Japan and Papua New Guinea and is over seven miles deep — that’s more than a mile deeper than Mount Everest is tall.

The trench is off-limits to regular human beings. However, Terminator, Avatar, and Titanic director and undersea explorer James Cameron descended to a depth of 35,787 feet in the Deepsea Challenger submersible in 2012 and lived to tell the tale.

White’s Gentleman’s Club is the oldest gentlemen’s club in London, founded in 1693 in Mayfair as a chocolate shop. Over the centuries, it became a private and exclusive club for gentlemen of refined taste and a bank balance to match, like King Charles III.

The annual membership fee used to be 10 guineas, but now it’s rumored to be $106,000. If you don’t have that sort of money lying around, you can catch a glimpse of White’s in Netflix’s The Crown.

Millions of tourists visit the Chichen Itza Pyramid every year. You used to be allowed to climb to the top of El Castillo or Temple of Kukulcan, but authorities closed the 80-foot ancient Mayan step pyramid to the public after a tragic accident in 2008.

Chichen Itza Pyramid was built by the Maya civilization a thousand years ago. The incredible archeo-astrological site served as a temple to the Yucatec Maya Feathered Serpent deity Kukulcán, known as Quetzalcoatl to the Aztecs.

If you thought Area 51 was nuts, conspiracy theorists believe Dulce Base under the Archuleta Mesa mountains on the Colorado — New Mexico border is home to an underground facility jointly operated by humans and gray aliens. The two species carry out experiments on hybrid human aliens.

The outlandish rumors surfaced in 1979 when Albuquerque businessman Paul Bennewitz intercepted electronic communications from an alien spacecraft. No one has found the secret entrance, but Dulce residents have reported UFOs, strange moving lights, and other unexplained sightings.

North Sentinel Island is the most forbidden place in the world. Lying in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, its indigenous people utterly reject the outside world. The Indian Navy prohibits travel within five miles, so the island is completely untouched by civilization.

After the 2004 tsunami, the Indian Coast Guard flew over to assess the damage, but the native Sentinelese tribespeople shot arrows at their helicopter. In 2018, a missionary tried to make contact and didn’t make it out alive. Do not go to North Sentinel Island, as you will not survive.