Places mfayesimon Wants to Go

Papier-mâché folk art recognizing horrors of slave trade.

Collapsed charcoal kilns in the Spring Mountains of southern Nevada.

Mexican food and folk art.

An oddity shop filled with loads of bones, skulls, crafting materials, vintage taxidermy, and more.

An increasingly eccentric apartment building, topped with winged beasties.

This “living museum” at UCLA exhibits thousands of plant species from all over the world.

This stockpile of junked electronic and mechanical gadgets is a favorite among Hollywood prop masters.

Each year these high desert hills are absolutely covered with poppy flowers in a surreal show of nature.

World War II-era Nazi compound nestled in the Santa Monica hills.

This traditional garden in the San Fernando Valley doubled for Star Fleet Academy, and is irrigated entirely by wastewater.

This serene oasis in an affluent Los Angeles neighborhood holds some of Gandhi's ashes and got Elvis into Eastern Philosophy.

An unreal vintage shop that wears its dadaist influence on its zombie fish.

Home to a forest of whimsical pygmy Coast live oak.

This park is home to California's first oil boomtown, with structures that have stood for more than a century.

The quiet canyon has a tumultuous history involving a doomsday cult.

A bomb shelter and some fireplaces are all that remain of the house Fred Roberts tried so hard to keep standing.

A strange mishmash of ruins and abandoned structures hint at the park's many lives.

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

An alley covered with 20 years of bubble gum.

A Mysterious Masonic tomb in San Luis Obispo.

From Japan to Italy, this California park explores the world's cultures through their gardens.

A basement full of treasures lies beneath this inn that has worn many hats throughout its 140+ years.

Machinery left over from California's once thriving mercury industry now attracts artists and explorers.

The San Andreas Fault spectacularly offsets this creek.