Places lomicster Wants to Go

The world's first permanently occupied mountain-top observatory continues to report on the stars.

A herd of 150 bison live on California's Santa Catalina Island and are at the heart of an ongoing debate between environmental protection and economic expansion.

This residential door allows San Francisco muggles a glimpse at the wizarding world.

The long, arduous journey of the stones of the Abbey of New Clairvaux.

On a quiet suburban street stands a peculiarly decorated house covered in mosaics.

NASA's leading space science lab started by a co-founder with deep ties to the occult.

One of the largest free-standing structures ever built, this dirigible hangar is now simply a giant skeleton.

An L.A. traffic island where the faces of locals have been carved into massive granite eggs.

This abandoned boat was left in place thanks to its rotting beauty.

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 beloved carnival gets a modern makeover in Los Angeles.

Space program, pneumatics and more, bits and pieces, for movie sets or the common man.

Dioramas and animatronics lead you through the story of Bhagavad-gita, the Indian literary classic.

A raised boardwalk winds through a thicket of stunted, century-old trees no more than nine feet tall.

The lighthouse central to the 1980s horror classic "The Fog" is, in fact, located in one of the foggiest areas of the Pacific Coast.

The graffiti-covered remnants of a former triangulation station are balanced precariously on this California peak.

No one’s quite sure why there's a metal megaphone bolted on two rocks in the middle of the Mojave Desert.

Gorgeous purple flowers drape from the world's largest blossoming plant.

Where there's quartz, there must be gold. Thus is the story of the mines of Julian, and the titillating times of the Gold Rush.

A deserted hodgepodge of experimental structures designed by nearby university students.

California's own majestic geyser is powered by a subterranean volcano.

The "3rd largest" city in California is an empty mirage of suburbia in the middle of nowhere.

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

Along a California highway is a kind of Jurassic Park made of metal.