Places hopemch Wants to Go

For over 20 years, Lil Toot has delighted guests with narrated boat rides between Stearns Wharf and Santa Barbara Harbor, becoming a beloved local legend and top-rated experience for visitors.

This remarkably simple jail went over a century without an escape.

The decaying adobe remains of an old homestead are just off the beaten path in Joshua Tree National Park.

This crumbling Death Valley mining complex was known for its use of giant, 20-mule team wagons.

This centerpiece of the Hollywood & Highland shopping center is a recreation of a long-lost movie set.

Spend a day hanging out with domesticated Russian foxes.

This California tree is the single source of the state's entire orange industry.

A lawless town deep in Death Valley was famous for its riches and death rate turned YouTube famous.

Santa Monica's oldest restaurant, decorated with set pieces from the Mutiny on the Bounty.

Pay your respects to departed pets, both celebrity and otherwise.

Where a great scandal unfolded with a famous female revivalist at its center.

A lighthouse built to save lives that took quite a few with its treacherous location.

The decor of this Hollywood movie palace just barely predated the opening of King Tut's tomb.

This surreptitious shop is only open five hours per week.

This little gem of Spanish Colonial architecture has been abandoned since the 1950s.

An abandoned boat that's been stranded mysteriously for decades.

A ghost town originally established and governed solely by Black Americans seeking a place of their own, free from discrimination.

A huge collection of rocks, gems, and crystals.

One of the first skyscrapers in Santa Monica, and a famous getaway for the Hollywood elite of then and now.

An iconic location along the Los Angeles River where countless movie scenes are filmed.

Common all over Japan, kōbans are small community police boxes, and now one is guarding one of L.A.’s megamalls.

The world's most famous donkey lives in this pen.

A massive ultra-modern church presents a science-fiction view of Catholicism's inclusive future.

A bright California graveyard with a decidedly dark side.