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

The headquarters of a secretive order is also a beautifully-designed park.

One of the oldest producers of hand-folded fortune cookies still uses its original secret recipe.

The tragedy of the Japanese internment camps is remembered here by a stark "Soul Consoling Tower."

L. Frank Baum wrote part of the "Wizard of Oz" series in this wooden Victorian beach resort.

The lighthouse central to the 1980s horror classic "The Fog" is, in fact, located in one of the foggiest areas of the Pacific Coast.

A popular tourist cave with a dark past.

A sign at the end of the Santa Monica Pier marks the traditional end of the legendary American highway.

The giant pair of sexy legs sticking out the window of this costume store have become its main draw.

An extensive collection of ancient Egyptian artifacts and mummies.

Golden Gate Park's historic collection of plants.

This concrete tangle of square pipes has stood as a proud thorn in the city's side since the '70s.

The unbelievably opulent home built for an infamous newspaperman.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hollywood's most famous landmark, the "temporary" sign that has stood for decades longer than intended.

A trash dump made beautiful by nature's power.

In all of the 29 years it was in operation, no prisoners ever escaped successfully... or so they claim.

A peculiar mansion built by the troubled heir to the Winchester Rifle Company fortune.

The arch that celebrated the completion of the Lincoln and Victory highways.