Places Abstergail Wants to Go

A modern mechanical planetary system, part of a 10,000 year clock.

Its buzzing collection honors vibrator history.

Half of a house.

One of few lasting examples of the brief octagon craze that developed into folly.

27-room home built with the fortune of a sugar magnate.

The restored and active Victorian-era final resting place of San Francisco.

A brooding mansion of clinker brick stands out among the Victorian houses of Pacific Heights.

Russian history in San Francisco.

340 bicycles, 65 feet high.

A poignant memorial to a young boy whose death spurred a dramatic increase in organ donations in Italy—dubbed the "Nicholas Effect."

The fossilized remains of ancient California redwoods.

This collection of hand fans doubles as a history of femininity.

A huge work of Burning Man-inspired outsider art on the grounds of a California winery.

A crumbling wizard is one of the final reminders of a roadside Middle Earth.

An optical illusion found amid a logged redwood forest.

This whimsical seashell-shaped place of worship was designed to blend into its surroundings.

This massive redwood tree has a hole in the base big enough to drive through.

One of only five observatories in the world built to measure the Earth's wobble.

The mysterious round rocks of Schooner Gulch.

A trash dump made beautiful by nature's power.

Celebrating the transformation of trash into objects of beauty.

A raised boardwalk winds through a thicket of stunted, century-old trees no more than nine feet tall.

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

The Zalud family experienced a number of tragedies in one decade, giving rise to rumors that the 19th century house is haunted.