Places franny Wants to Go

A relief that wraps around the concourse of Los Angeles's World Trade Center marks one of the city's failed urban design plans.

A self-built castle made by a mysterious man.

Hike amid the palm trees that thrive among Southern California's Indio Hills.

World's largest collection devoted to one fruit.

This junkyard made over as a theme park is the "Most Alaskan place in Alaska."

Rippling sand dunes frozen in the Arizona rock.

An amazing collection of fantastic reptiles, amphibians, spiders, and insects.

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

Travelers exchange letters with woodland creatures at this mini post office.

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

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

The highest dunes in California are the most likely place in the area to hear the Singing Sands.

A Tibetan Temple and Buddhist organization just off the beaten path in Northern California.

California's own medieval Italian castle, authentic down to the 300-year-old iron maiden in the dungeon.

The largest drain hole in the world.

This stretch of beach along California's central coast is a busy highway for the largest seal in the northern hemisphere.

This small city where almost everyone lives in the same building can only be reached via North America's longest tunnel.

The ruins of a town wiped out by the second-largest earthquake in recorded history.

Folk art crafted from discarded vegetable crates.

I Street Bridge is the heaviest swinging center bridge in the United States.

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

These delicate buggers are some of the rarest fossils that have bubbled up from the Tar Pits.

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

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