A restored 1920s cascade stairway provides one of the best views of Oakland's Lake Merritt.

Antiques by the Bay.

The only thing stranger than stumbling onto these philosophical musings is the story of the homesteader who created them.

340 bicycles, 65 feet high.

America's oldest Italian restaurant is a San Francisco institution.

North America's largest accredited model railroad museum.

A dwindling menagerie of anthropomorphic oil derrick animals still dot the barren California landscape.

Nose around a unique collection of more than 300 natural aromas used to craft fragrances.

This lesser known Hearst estate is a fairytale village built from the stolen bones of historic European buildings.

A shape-shifting buy-sell-trade bookstore, born to Beatnik Era spirit.

The show's fictional Korean medical camp was created in the Santa Monica hills.

Abandoned hotel with adjacent lake and golf course.

This abandoned boat was left in place thanks to its rotting beauty.

Like a kitschy mirage in the Mojave, this eatery serves up classic 50s-style diner meals and a dinosaur sculpture garden.

This desert oddity hides in plain sight thanks to a cartographic error and a desert explorer with a punny sense of humor.

An ultra-modern vista that has been featured in so many films the house is a celebrity in its own right.

This San Diego museum is dedicated to preserving women’s historic achievements.

Bits and pieces from the ill-fated Donner Party's winter cabins.

An abandoned Cold War missile radar site.

A vast city of the dead, where the deceased outnumber the living by more than a million.

The most beautiful Taco Bell in the world even has surfboard parking.

This Oakland fairytale kingdom, fiercely devoted to childlike whimsy, was an early inspiration for Disneyland.

This infamous prison has a store where you can buy goods crafted by incarcerated people.

This store is dedicated to unique found footage and the strangeness of pre-internet pop-culture.