Known as the "Dodo Manège," this carousel features a herd of animals that have disappeared—or may be gone soon.

A 90-acre park on former landfill that hosts an annual kite festival.

A B&B on a Victorian lighthouse station in San Francisco Bay.

Life in this isolated, hilltop lighthouse was lonely, but it sure was lovely.

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

Offering commanding views of the California coastline, this restaurant was a hub for the artists and bohemians of Big Sur.

It's not your typical library, memorial, or book store.

A spiritual vortex among the red rocks in Sedona.

Mysterious 500-year-old tapestries depict a unicorn hunt.

This little-known collection holds everything from "Dracula" notes, to the manuscript of "Ulysses," to the forged works of Shakespeare.

Only hotel where you can legally launder money.

Alleyway plaque commemorating the death of a fictional character in The Maltese Falcon, not far from the author's home.

San Francisco's oldest surviving monument and meeting place for 1906 survivors.

A still functioning vaudeville carousel that has operated for over a century boasts a colorful menagerie and past.

Furniture tries to escape an abandoned building in San Francisco.

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

Since 1973, this block has been home to the most concentrated collection of murals in San Francisco.

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

An essential stop before plundering, BYO Cutlass.

The miraculous hydrant that saved the Mission District in 1906.

The Midwest's reigning king of surplus stores is full of nothing you need and everything you want.

Home to the Amorphophallus titanum "Corpse Flower," which is among the largest flowers in the world and also smells powerfully of rotting flesh when in bloom.

These curious caverns have been home to mushrooms, gangsters, and disco.

A museum within a museum, devoted to history's most questionable medical devices.