Machinery left over from California's once thriving mercury industry now attracts artists and explorers.

A Mysterious Masonic tomb in San Luis Obispo.

A hotel and restaurant serving as the mecca of kitsch.

A house built from trash known as the poor man's Hearst Castle.

Cambria's most unique B&B features creative surroundings and fantastic food.

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

Hidden among the multi-million dollar mansions in the Santa Cruz hills is a sanctuary for troubled birds.

A collection of 20th-century automata, penny arcade games, and musical contraptions.

A walk-in working camera obscura produces 360-degree live images of the San Francisco coast.

A psychedelic labyrinth on the San Francisco bay.

Get lost in this haunting fairytale art walk through a man-made eucalyptus grove.

A whimsical antique shop with a strong air of mystery, filled with items from ages, and what feels like worlds, past.

A miniature view of the park, caught in time.

Julia Morgan's Moorish-Gothic labyrinth of fountains, trees, natural light and Oakland's notable dead.

San Francisco's newly reopened hands-on science museum.

An invitation-only museum of items natural and bizarre, arcane and exotic.

The only theatre in the world constructed specifically for sound movement.

Thirteen trees representing the original thirteen colonies were planted with soil from historic Revolutionary battlefields.

A hidden subterranean installation offers a view of the sky.

A favorite haunt of dinosaur loving children and hallucinogen loving hippies alike.

The stones that traveled from Spain to eventually become a holy place for San Francisco's nature worshippers.

The remains of a 12th-century chapter house in Golden Gate Park.

California's most comprehensive horticultural library.

An overlooked and unassuming engineering marvel.