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.

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

Rainbow-hued local gem in Venice.

The only Native American comic shop in the world.

When life gave this firefighter a forest fire, he made a rough-hewn sculpture park using a chainsaw.

A fine mixture of the old and the new topped with an art deco neon spire.

A rich history stashed behind an unassuming door in the heart of Gold Country.

This large, castle-like structure is hidden amid the mountains on the grounds of the Utah State Hospital.

An oddly specific collection of handmade dolls remembers the women of the White House.

A towering tribute to decisiveness stands on the spot where Brigham Young and his followers decided that this must be the place.

A cemetery full of touching tombstones from a community of railroad workers, uranium miners, and Cold War missile launchers.

A quirky old tree covered in tokens, cans, and bottles of wishes.

This lava formation earned its whimsical name from the log-like formation of it stones.

The extensive collection of an amateur naturalist.

A museum has some wedding cake dating to the Teddy Roosevelt administration, and some bacon from FDR's.

A 90-foot-tall psychedelic "tree" on the side of the highway has baffled passersby for decades.

A proto micro-nation sometimes populated by artists, surrounded on all sides by a Utah most barren.

This museum remembers the tough Mormon trek across America through an intriguing array of artifacts.

A desert settlement founded and later abandoned by Hawaiian members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah's Skull Valley.

The marker offers a rare chance to be in four U.S. states at once, though there's some controversy over its geographic accuracy.

This geothermal hot spring hides beneath a slowly growing mineral dome.

Nationwide network of co-ownership underground catastrophe shelters.

The abandoned train depot now doubles as a well-placed rest stop for those who take the road less traveled.

This secluded date farm can be reached only by following a bumpy, single-lane desert road.