A storybook European village in Berkeley.

Staircase winds down the side of Telegraph Hill through gardens, wild parrots flying overhead.

The one-time watch house for incoming ships at the Golden Gate now stands abandoned and hidden in trees.

A shop full of natural curiosities, carnivorous plants, and costumed taxidermied mice.

Relics of the 1894 Midwinter Exposition continue to delight visitors today.

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

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

Olfactory delights in San Francisco's Botanical Gardens.

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

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

Carnivorous plants, medieval aphrodisiacs, and the largest original wood structure glass conservatory in the western hemisphere.

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

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

A winding path built in secret on the edge of the continent.

This shop specializes in oddities and Victorian-inspired wonders.

Towering basalt columns, a creation of fire and ice.

An artsy hidden staircase leads to breathtaking views of San Francisco.

Bring your own cardboard to the slippery slopes of concrete hidden in a neighborhood park.

Small Nevada town embraced its designation as the "Armpit of America" with an Old Spice-sponsored festival.

The world's largest dead polar bear, immortalized by taxidermy and Hunter S. Thompson.

An errant donkey ushered in a new era of mining in Nevada.

There's nothing creepier than a cemetery next to a clown motel.

One man's ambition created this psychedelic log home.

Oh, just a motel on the edge of the desert decorated with thousands of clowns conveniently located next to an abandoned graveyard.