A faux European lane smack dab in downtown L.A.

The last remaining relic of San Francisco's glittering 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition.

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

An essential stop before plundering, BYO Cutlass.

Historic funicular railway, believed to be the shortest railroad in the world.

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

Stripes of flowers bloom each spring in a 50 acre rainbow of color.

Trails through lava-carved tube-caves display sparkling bacteria and a rich history.

After starting as a whimsical tourist attraction that eventually found its way to ruin, these renovated canals offer a lush and exotic locale on the Pacific Coast.

Canyon walls shrouded in ferns.

This serene oasis in an affluent Los Angeles neighborhood holds some of Gandhi's ashes and got Elvis into Eastern Philosophy.

This Los Angeles animation studio is keeping the wonder of stop motion puppetry alive.

One man's vast collection of artifacts and ephemera from matchbooks and postcards to vintage neon signs and cars.

One of the most scenic stretches of road in America winds between some of the country's oldest trees.

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

Panorama exhibition hall in old silent theater with a beautiful backyard garden.

Quite simply the largest tree in the world (by volume).

Scores of vintage street lamps shine along L.A.’s Miracle Mile.

The private clubhouse for the members of the Academy of Magical Arts.

These delicate buggers are some of the rarest fossils that have bubbled up from the Tar Pits.

The seawater playground of gilded-era San Francisco burned to the ground in 1966.

Each year these high desert hills are absolutely covered with poppy flowers in a surreal show of nature.

An underground mansion with fruit-bearing trees and grapes growing beneath the surface of central California.

This strange seaside tower got its name from a wealthy eccentric who would hide coins among its stones.