Not merely a museum – but a whirring powerhouse that offers a subterranean peek into the heart and soul of cable car operations.

The last remaining relic of San Francisco's glittering 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition.

Version of the French Riviera destroyed by the sea.

Smooth basaltic rocks tell a tale of ancient glacial waterfalls.

An extraordinarily ornate museum in San Diego holds wondrous anthropological treasures.

A fake town founded by Western movie stars is now becoming a hip desert community.

This naturally heated mountainous creek has created a group of neon blue pools of potentially deadly boiling water.

World-famous, Pink's still manages to keep its prized cult fetish status.

The "Fun Spot of the Desert" is now a haunting ruin, and a reminder that putting a water park in a desert is a bad idea.

The highest dunes in California are the most likely place in the area to hear the Singing Sands.

Abandoned hotel with adjacent lake and golf course.

Quite simply the largest tree in the world (by volume).

Where there's quartz, there must be gold. Thus is the story of the mines of Julian, and the titillating times of the Gold Rush.

San Diego's most historic and haunted home.

The rusting remains of the largest assembled WWII fleet on the West Coast.

The liveliest ghost town in the state.

Ancient human, animal, and geometric figures drawn in the earth.

Named after a bandit and the star of several Hollywood prehistoric landscapes, these sandstone formations are a historical part of the Los Angeles natural landscape.

One of the most scenic stretches of road in America winds between some of the country's oldest trees.

Coastal dunes, site of buried Egyptian movie set and former utopian colony.

Eons old volcanic activity created one of the most stunning rock formations in the United States.

The "3rd largest" city in California is an empty mirage of suburbia in the middle of nowhere.

The largest drain hole in the world.

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