Places chelsb423 Wants to Go

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 Francisco's most expensive hotel suite includes a secret passageway rumored to have been used by JFK.

Legendary prop shop filled with one man's collection of scientific curiosities.

Nursery with extensive collection of flesh-eating plants operated by the author of "The Savage Garden."

This little blue house pokes out over the campus of UC San Diego, seven stories high.

This forgotten Frank Lloyd Wright house is an architectural marvel at the end of a sleepy residential street.

Arcadia is home to a haven for nature geeks and 80s TV lovers alike.

Smooth basaltic rocks tell a tale of ancient glacial waterfalls.

Travelers leave tea kettles in a remote part of Death Valley as part of a mysterious, decades-old tradition.

What began with a single, 357-pound chunk of the Canyon Diablo meteorite grew to be an impressive collection. 

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

California's own majestic geyser is powered by a subterranean volcano.

The abandoned train depot now doubles as a well-placed rest stop for those who take the road less traveled.

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

San Francisco's oldest operating hotel, with a Victorian atmosphere and a "haunted" fourth floor.

Once a place of peaceful repose, this sanitarium now faces an uncertain future.

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

Two rocks in a perpetual kiss and one of "the most romantic spot in America."

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

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

Along a California highway is a kind of Jurassic Park made of metal.

This old mining town, deep in the California desert, has a year-round population of one.

Two men, two visionaries of Venice Beach, one little hotel that smells like cookies.

One of the world's largest collections of rare and magnificent bird specimens.