An unassuming grey box sitting on San Francisco's Pier 17 is a "sky diary" of the coastal city's temperamental weather.

Visible below the waves are memorials to the city's Gold Rush dead.

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

Its buzzing collection honors vibrator history.

Longtime headquarters of controversial boys' club for the world's wealthiest and most powerful.

Every year, over 25,000 monarchs overwinter in Pacific Grove.

A nondescript building that's been functioning as a speakeasy for nearly a century and a half.

A museum befitting the city responsible for supplying the majority of the world's LSD.

A 140-year-old castle with underground caves hidden in San Francisco.

An "anarchical" no man's land, complete with garbage sculptures and a hobo-run "Landfillian Library."

An amazing collection of fantastic reptiles, amphibians, spiders, and insects.

A modern day curiosity cabinet.

A private home built to resemble the shape of a microscopic creature.

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

A peculiar mansion built by the troubled heir to the Winchester Rifle Company fortune.

San Francisco Bay's ghost town.

Home to the "Circus" trees created by Axel Erlandson.

Over 300 taxidermied animals in a Californian restaurant make for a taxidermist's dream and an animal lover's nightmare.

Standing in a state of "arrested decay," this ghost town allows for a detailed peek into Gold Rush life in an unusually harsh climate.

In the country around Buttonwillow, California, a marker commemorates a revealing moment in the story of a water colony from the fictional Kcymaerxthaere that sought independence.

Aqueducts have dramatically changed this old lake, now home to tufa towers and its very own species of tiny brine shrimp.

Smooth basaltic rocks tell a tale of ancient glacial waterfalls.

The rocks in this arid basin leave trails of movement behind them.

Under the right circumstances, this waterfall in Yosemite briefly turns a luminescent fiery orange.