Places calirootsinthedeschutes Wants to Go

Graffiti, cars, and religion combine to create this jungle of scrap in the Nevada desert.

Oakland's beautiful monumental cemetery.

Odd stone and concrete monuments in the "Poet of the Sierras" eclectic folly garden.

A ruined hotel with an unlucky history and an eerie present.

A strange house built only at night, with rumored mystic inspiration.

The memorial to the victims of the Jonestown Massacre carries the names of 918 lost, including one name people wish wasn't there.

Another of California's unused Cold War missile defense complexes has become a graffiti gallery.

Neoclassical Revival mansion and set of horror cult classic Phantasm.

One of the oldest reform schools in the United States, home to wayward boys such as Merle Haggard, now abandoned.

Successful artist residence program has filled this ranch with dozens of sculptures over the years.

An ominous concrete cube cuts a dystopian silhouette atop this California mountain.

Guarded by the Angel of Grief, the Stanford family tomb attracts an odd mix of halloween revelry and somber contemplation.

A sudden forest of traditional Papua New Guinean art works is hidden in a corner of Stanford University.

The old Niles Canyon Aqueduct in the San Francisco Bay Area is a bemusing and secret trail through nature for wayward travelers.

The world's first permanently occupied mountain-top observatory continues to report on the stars.