An iconic location along the Los Angeles River where countless movie scenes are filmed.

A vast city of the dead, where the deceased outnumber the living by more than a million.

Get up close to emus and ostriches, or buy their tasty meat.

This one-block alleyway is stuffed with street art that is colorful, cultural, and intensely political.

A speck of nature and art in one of San Francisco’s most notorious neighborhoods.

The remains of a 12th-century chapter house in Golden Gate Park.

One of the world's longest murals depicts the history of diversity in Los Angeles.

The stones that traveled from Spain to eventually become a holy place for San Francisco's nature worshippers.

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

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

A 300-ship graveyard, with a few still visible at low tide.

This Big Sur waterfall drops 80 feet directly into the Pacific Ocean, and inspired the hillside house up top.

When California condors were hovering on the brink of extinction, this recovery program was charged with helping the birds thrive again.

This stretch of beach along California's central coast is a busy highway for the largest seal in the northern hemisphere.

Bring your own cardboard to the slippery slopes of concrete hidden in a neighborhood park.

The oldest continuously operating church in California.

This eagle-topped spire remembers the military commander who snatched up California for the United States.

Enormous crabs, bioluminescent jellies, and other amazing creatures from the ocean’s depths—some of which are in an aquarium for the first time ever.

This lonesome Monterey cypress has survived centuries of wind, salt, and at least one attempt at arson.

This remarkably simple jail went over a century without an escape.

A surviving concrete arrow from a 1920s navigational network is preserved right off a modern freeway.

The self-made house sculpture of an outsider artist who named himself "Chief Rolling Thunder."

Small Nevada town embraced its designation as the "Armpit of America" with an Old Spice-sponsored festival.

An attractive alpine lake at 8,400 feet that is accessible via a paved road.