A chain of bells connect the California Missions and honor the legend of the "King’s Highway."

A simple statue outside a California Amtrak station honors the overlooked contributions of the "silent spikes."

This Big Sur waterfall drops 80 feet directly into the Pacific Ocean, and inspired the hillside house up top.

A massive volcanic plug is now a protected area that hosts a number of bird species.

A hotel and restaurant serving as the mecca of kitsch.

An alley covered with 20 years of bubble gum.

One of the last surviving buildings of a once large and thriving Chinatown.

This magnificent, quirky home sits atop a literal gold mine in the middle of the Nevada desert.

One man's ambition created this psychedelic log home.

The remote outlaw hideout of Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, and the Sundance Kid.

A small town built on an abandoned airfield has former runways as streets and a bar and grill in an old airplane hangar.

An experimental, automotive replica of Stonehenge.

Thousands of years ago, Indigenous people painted images onto these canyon walls that are still on display today, provocative, mysterious, and enduring reminders of the people who lived here long ago.

Few things look more out of place than the electric blue ponds in the reddish-brown desert of Utah.

This raised bulls-eye visible from space was the subject of an intense geologic controversy.

A beautiful combination of living flora with preserved bones covers the shelves of this shop.

This stone marker honors the man who released Canada goose goslings in Fort Collins, Colorado.

This dynamic entertainment venue brings a much-needed funkiness to the region with its bizarre art, eclectic films screenings, and peculiar performance pieces.

After being lost for nearly a century, this historic bell finally returned home after its mysterious theft.

A ghost town that held steady longer than most, but finally gave up the ghost.

The fifth-longest natural arch in the world, and the longest outside China.

The highest paved road in North America winds its way up Mount Blue Sky in Colorado to an altitude of 14,130 feet above sea level.

This tea house was a hand-built gift from Boulder's sister city in Tajikstan.

This mining town boomed in the Atomic Age when uranium was gold, only to be abandoned when the industry collapsed.