Places Edited by causeiwander

Hundreds of painted rocks dazzle this small beach where adding your own is encouraged.

Beneath the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge is the “Gibraltar of the West Coast,” a fort built to protect the San Francisco Bay from naval attack.

According to legend, this rock represents a young girl trapped by an evil ocean spirit.

This once-booming Gold Rush town is now home to a herd of feral donkeys.

In the power of this waterfall, Alexander Hamilton saw the potential for industry.

Inside this striking glass building, visitors can see thousands of dinosaur fossils in the positions that nature deposited them more than 150 million years ago.

An old California photo stand has been turned into a shrine to the cozy art of crochet.

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

For roadside fast food, pull over at the giant orange.

“Live hard, ride fast, eat pizza” at this joint filled with Evel Knievel memorabilia.

This distinctive Crescent City tradition dates back to the days of horse-drawn carriages.

This abandoned boat sits on a nude beach, is shaped like a UFO, and is covered in graffiti.

A derelict bit of infrastructure from the canal that once ran through D.C. is landlocked in the heart of the city.

The park preserves a single, rare species of carnivorous plant that spells doom for unsuspecting insects.

One of the largest Marian shrines on the West Coast stands rather unexpectedly in Silicon Valley.

Mine your own precious stones.

A life-sized mammoth sculpture marks the spot where the remains of a Columbian mammoth were discovered in 2005.

An exotic wildlife habitat right off The Strip.

This lake in the Cascades lives up to its name, disappearing down a hole every spring.

A clone-tree in Washington Square Park sprung from seeds that went to the Moon and back.

The final resting place of New Orleans' most famous voodoo priestess.

The second largest waterfall by volume in the U.S., Willamette Falls is outdone only by Niagara in the amount of water that is pushed northward.

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

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