From the sky, a kaleidoscope of color brightens the grey landscape of the San Francisco Bay.

Once close to extinction, there is no shortage of elephant seals on the beaches of Año Nuevo State Park.

I Street Bridge is the heaviest swinging center bridge in the United States.

A New England-style lighthouse along California's beautiful Highway 1 gets a re-do.

The rusting remains of the largest assembled WWII fleet on the West Coast.

This controversial depiction of the "Founder of California" looks as though it was sculpted from mashed potatoes.

A decommissioned Naval base now rents itself out for people who want to blow stuff up.

Where the alchemists dream of transmuting base metal into gold was actually achieved.

The Empire Mine is "one of the oldest, largest, deepest, longest and richest gold mines in California."

A crumbling Beaux Arts monument to the Bay Area's age of rail.

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

The beauty and the beast of hydraulic mining is on full display at this California Historic State Park.

This Nevada lake holds its titular natural pyramid and, if the legends are true, a number of dangerous spirits.

Big gun installations, built over a massive cemetery, now abandoned & hidden in trees.

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

A 300-ship graveyard, with a few still visible at low tide.

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

Radioactivity still cause for concern at this urban explorer's paradise.

A pier that used to act as a busy ferry dock is now a decaying favorite of local fisherman and urban artists.

One time home to turn of the century explosives, now hidden under the Bay Bridge.

Condemned US Navy seaplane control tower turned officers’ club sits atop Yerba Buena Island.

An enormous artwork that colorfully celebrates over 150 years of US military achievements.

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

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