Places nejuum Wants to Go

A small space-exploration exhibit hidden in a hotel.

From pre-war whiskey cocktails to prohibition-era speakeasy secrecy, this bar has seen it all.

The site of murders and Satanic cult gatherings.

A striking geological formation in Southern California.

Oldest building in California still in use.

Hidden in a hotel parking lot is a strange historical plaque erected by an obscure fraternal society.

The Empire Mine is "one of the oldest, largest, deepest, longest and richest gold mines in California."

Eclectic collection of dark and macabre antiques.

An old-timey medicine shop that once served Chinese laborers during the Gold Rush is still open for business to this day.

Special tunnels built so that frogs won't be killed when crossing the highway.

Odd stone and concrete monuments in the "Poet of the Sierras" eclectic folly garden.

One of the best absinthe distilleries in the United States.

Once the fastest ship from San Francisco to Tahiti, the Galilee now lays in pieces in three different cities.

Join the circus for a few lessons to learn clowning, acrobatics, and Chinese contortion.

Part mural and part sculpture, this work of art sits in the middle of the Promenade, as if swimming in a river of asphalt towards the ocean.

A monumental cross hides in the trees in Golden Gate Park.

Under the shadow of its towering parent tree, a rare specimen of sequoia produces ghostly white leaves.

This sculpture was made out of recycled guns that were turned in to the city.

This odd little museum holds exhibits on everything from blacksmith equipment to hair jewelry.

Another of California's unused Cold War missile defense complexes has become a graffiti gallery.

A rough granite monument marks the spot where Europeans first caught sight of the San Francisco Bay.

A 1920s speakeasy that had rum runners racing up and down the shores of California.

Elephant seals and sea lions have turned the abandoned buildings on this island into their endangered love shack.

Housed in a memorial lighthouse, this museum relays the history of surfing, beginning with the antics of royal Hawaiian teenagers.