The fossilized remains of ancient California redwoods.

A crumbling Beaux Arts monument to the Bay Area's age of rail.

A peculiar mansion built by the troubled heir to the Winchester Rifle Company fortune.

Julia Morgan's Moorish-Gothic labyrinth of fountains, trees, natural light and Oakland's notable dead.

Antiques by the Bay.

The newsstand that never closes its doors—well, almost never.

A working model of the entire San Francisco Bay and much of the Sacramento River Delta, complete with regular tides that change every 14 minutes.

A monument to the love people have for their pets.

In all of the 29 years it was in operation, no prisoners ever escaped successfully... or so they claim.

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

An "anarchical" no man's land, complete with garbage sculptures and a hobo-run "Landfillian Library."

A shape-shifting buy-sell-trade bookstore, born to Beatnik Era spirit.

An vast warehouse of everyday treasures in Berkeley, CA.

Oakland's beautiful monumental cemetery.

Dive bar built out of the remains of a whaling ship.

Playable, historic pinball machines fill this Alameda museum.

One of the best absinthe distilleries in the United States.

A decommissioned Naval base now rents itself out for people who want to blow stuff up.

San Francisco Bay's ghost town.

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

Oldest building in California still in use.

Only hotel where you can legally launder money.

A shop full of natural curiosities, carnivorous plants, and costumed taxidermied mice.

An essential stop before plundering, BYO Cutlass.