This Oakland fairytale kingdom, fiercely devoted to childlike whimsy, was an early inspiration for Disneyland.

Bonsai garden in Oakland is curated by the first non-Japanese female bonsai master in the United States.

Playable, historic pinball machines fill this Alameda museum.

From the sky, a kaleidoscope of color brightens the grey landscape of the San Francisco Bay.

A burnt orange monolithic dome structure perched on a hillside near Interstate 280.

This old-world mansion with lush gardens is a gem in the heart of Silicon Valley.

Once close to extinction, there is no shortage of elephant seals on the beaches of Año Nuevo State Park.

Elephant seals and sea lions have turned the abandoned buildings on this island into their endangered love shack.

A psychedelic labyrinth on the San Francisco bay.

A collection of 20th-century automata, penny arcade games, and musical contraptions.

A 90-acre park on former landfill that hosts an annual kite festival.

A playground built by the kids that is a child's wonderland, and a helicopter parent's nightmare.

A pier that used to act as a busy ferry dock is now a decaying favorite of local fisherman and urban artists.

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

The key to turning shifting dunes into the green oasis of Golden Gate Park.

Join the circus for a few lessons to learn clowning, acrobatics, and Chinese contortion.

Under the shadow of its towering parent tree, a rare specimen of sequoia produces ghostly white leaves.

Golden Gate Park's historic collection of plants.

San Francisco's urban bison herd has persisted in the face of extinction, development, and disease.

Olfactory delights in San Francisco's Botanical Gardens.

A garden oasis filled with flowers mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare.

The seawater playground of gilded-era San Francisco burned to the ground in 1966.

The taxidermied remains of the "last wild grizzly bear in California" and of the symbol of the state of California.

A century and a half of research in the sciences and natural history, still going strong.