The old Niles Canyon Aqueduct in the San Francisco Bay Area is a bemusing and secret trail through nature for wayward travelers.

This quaint archive of the silent era preserves and pays homage to a seminal moment in film history.

Home to one of the world’s largest collections of model yachts.

The remains of a ruined mansion memorialize the 1906 earthquake.

Fonts are born and bred here at the oldest letterpress type foundry in the United States.

Barely visible foundations remain where Stow Lake’s “observatory” once welcomed visitors.

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

Olfactory delights in San Francisco's Botanical Gardens.

California's most comprehensive horticultural library.

San Francisco's first World's Fair, dedicated to the wonders of California.

The restored and active Victorian-era final resting place of San Francisco.

Appropriation-friendly collection of books, periodicals, and more.

A library and museum dedicated to typography.

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

Final resting place of a 19th century gold prospector and convicted cannibal.

The hike through a narrow river flanked by the 2,000-foot-tall walls of Zion Canyon is one of the best in the world.

A house carved into a rock in the 1940s.

Settled by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1859, this abandoned frontier town has appeared in several films.

A Mars simulation in the southern Utah desert.

An arresting arch punched straight through a mountain provides one of the most scenic spots, and challenging climbs, on the planet.

Where the U.S. government kept its actual treasure, before Fort Knox.

A small flooded ghost town with a few scattered structures remaining.

Where scientists keep miles of very valuable ice from Antarctica and Greenland from melting.

Rather than a run-of-the-mill franchise hotel, this lodging has been decked out in dinosaur decor.