Places From the Backwoods Wants to Go

Golden Gate Park's historic collection of plants.

Gold Rush-era tombstones line the park's paths.

A Barbary Coast watering hole built into a Gold Rush shipwreck.

The restored and active Victorian-era final resting place of San Francisco.

A collection of memorabilia from the Beat era in the back of a San Francisco bookstore.

This shop and studio is dedicated to the art of the book, from letterpress to bookbinding.

A historic hotel that made a cameo in Hitchcock's classic film has no intention of letting guests forget its fame.

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

San Francisco's oldest surviving monument and meeting place for 1906 survivors.

The last remaining relic of San Francisco's glittering 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition.

The tea room that pushed the boundaries of adorable straight into... we can't find the words.

Visible below the waves are memorials to the city's Gold Rush dead.

The one-time watch house for incoming ships at the Golden Gate now stands abandoned and hidden in trees.

A tiny theater hidden in an alley plays a constant stream of short silent films for anyone willing to peer through the peephole.

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

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

A favorite haunt of dinosaur loving children and hallucinogen loving hippies alike.

A walk-in working camera obscura produces 360-degree live images of the San Francisco coast.

Relics of the 1894 Midwinter Exposition continue to delight visitors today.

A museum befitting the city responsible for supplying the majority of the world's LSD.

Olfactory delights in San Francisco's Botanical Gardens.

There is no trying to fall in love with this Star Wars fountain, you just do or do not.

Get lost in this haunting fairytale art walk through a man-made eucalyptus grove.

A winding path built in secret on the edge of the continent.