Places educatorclaire Wants to Go

Trails through lava-carved tube-caves display sparkling bacteria and a rich history.

Tiki luxury on Nob Hill.

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

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

The "world's biggest dinosaur" once housed a creationist museum in its abdomen.

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

A Swedenborgian glass church surrounded by redwoods sits perched atop a massive landslide area.

Aqueducts have dramatically changed this old lake, now home to tufa towers and its very own species of tiny brine shrimp.

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

Behind this beachfront shop lies a spectacular, colorful sea cave with an equally colorful past.

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

An underground mansion with fruit-bearing trees and grapes growing beneath the surface of central California.

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

Panorama exhibition hall in old silent theater with a beautiful backyard garden.

Each year these high desert hills are absolutely covered with poppy flowers in a surreal show of nature.

Carnivorous plants, medieval aphrodisiacs, and the largest original wood structure glass conservatory in the western hemisphere.

Its buzzing collection honors vibrator history.

This strange seaside tower got its name from a wealthy eccentric who would hide coins among its stones.

Towering basalt columns, a creation of fire and ice.

America's most famous piece of self-built architecture.

The legendary building that needed ghostly approval before being built.

A psychedelic labyrinth on the San Francisco bay.

Under the right circumstances, this waterfall in Yosemite briefly turns a luminescent fiery orange.

Remants of foundations, streets, and streetcar tracks inhabit the cliffs where a landslide occurred in 1929.