The lowest point in North America is home to an undrinkable pool surrounded by fields of geometric salt flats.

Costumed elves and mountain bikers co-exist peacefully at this abandoned Christmas-themed adventure park.

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

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

The "world's biggest dinosaur" once housed a creationist museum in its abdomen.

The ghost town that ended up on Ebay.

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

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

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

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

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

Carved by a waterfall in a hard-to-reach rock formation, this heart-shaped rock has inspired romantics for decades.

Tiki luxury on Nob Hill.

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.

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

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

A hotel and restaurant serving as the mecca of kitsch.

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

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

Its buzzing collection honors vibrator history.

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

Towering basalt columns, a creation of fire and ice.