So, despite some of Skyrim's flaws, one thing that cannot be faulted is this: Skyrim rewards the explorer. That said, what little location did you find that you thought was a nifty out of the way place? For me, it'd be the Nordic ruins in the Jerald Mountains (The name escapes me) and I just recently found this little unmarked Dwemer totem high up on the top slopes of a mountain somewhere between The Pale and Whiterun Hold. I'd found a Dwemer hammer with Soulbound skills to it. It's finding nifty things like this that make me enjoy exploring.

What find awed you/ made you appreciate it while exploring?

Have you ever found the mammoth that's frozen in a glacier? That's in my top 5 finds.

Sunsets over the mountains :')

Finding the little shrines scattered here and there are pretty neat and convenient for my pro-Nine character.

Speaking of mammoths, there was a mammoth skeleton I found in the tundra with a human skeleton in it. I made a thread for it a while back and someone told me that one of the DB members mentions hiding a body in a dead mammoth. Bethesda, you may take a lot of crap from people but you always get the little things right!

My PC recently lost its main hard drive, so I lost all my Skyrim stuff with it, and cannot remember where this place is, but I do have a screenshot.

http://i81.photobucket.com/albums/j215/aussie500/Skyrim/IronbindOverlookpotions.jpg~original

This impressed me, not only because it was unexpected and easily missed, but I had to work out how to get those potion bottles off there. In the end I worked out to get them three different ways, although one I lost a few.

In Dawnguard there was an egg hunt in part of the Forgotten Vale that had me diligently hunting eggs for a while, one of them near the bridge to the Inner Sanctum was also hard to get and I only found one way to do it. I suspect the same game designer did both challenges.

Skyrim's chicken necromancer was also a find easily missed.

There is also the usual skeletons with a story, or the item cleverly hidden under some baskets, or on top of a fireplace, certainly Dragonborn and those pendants had us hunting all over the place for little finds.

The special pickaxe if you went exploring up high.

All those shrines that are not marked on the map.

One of those treasure maps still has me defeated I think. Will have to dig them all out of storage and check.

The cold Prison way out in the middle of no where. That cell with the light in it had me trying all sorts of spells.

And there are tons of other things.

I heard about that. Where is the location for this?

How I can feel a genuine sense of returning home when I...well...return home. Just got done playing Dragonborn (I'm pretty sure I now have PTSD); returning to Skyrim/familiar faces/familiar places never felt so good.

I find stuff on UESP.

I love you, that's exactly the place I was mentioning in my OP

The trail from Ivarstead on the eastern side of the throat that intersects the road north to Whiterun. One of the reasons I finally ditched FT.

A sunken barrow with four animal switches at top near the road west from Whiterun.

Shrine of Talos and one other a little east or northeast of Heljerchen and a chest with a Daedric Battleaxe. (Leveled) A beautiful scene in the snowy, forested waste.

And so many more I can't possibly remember them.

He's a little southeast of Ivarstead, on a cliff somewhere. Beware of his legion.

There is a shrine of Talos near Gallows rock that sits right next to a decent sized pond that I thought was pretty interesting. My personal favorite is the skeleton there the North East edge of the map that has a bunch of gold ingots sitting around it.

i recently stumbled upon the Dwemer ruin near Morrowind border with only one room and when you activate some pedestal or something it drops you several hundred feet into a small underground pond and you have to fight your way through some Falmer to get back on surface. Was cool.

Gotta love the chickenmancers.