This stretch of beach along California's central coast is a busy highway for the largest seal in the northern hemisphere.

An vast warehouse of everyday treasures in Berkeley, CA.

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.

The only museum of sake in the United States is nestled in an unlikely California college town.

Once close to extinction, there is no shortage of elephant seals on the beaches of Año Nuevo State Park.

The headquarters of a secretive order is also a beautifully-designed park.

A vast city of the dead, where the deceased outnumber the living by more than a million.

Every year, over 25,000 monarchs overwinter in Pacific Grove.

Hopeless romantics will swoon over the sweet story behind this bright and colorful home.

A hidden world of exotic succulents and cacti.

Like a kitschy mirage in the Mojave, this eatery serves up classic 50s-style diner meals and a dinosaur sculpture garden.

Playable, historic pinball machines fill this Alameda museum.

The most beautiful Taco Bell in the world even has surfboard parking.

Happy harbor seals frolic and snooze on this warm, sandy stretch of coast.

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

The tragedy of the Japanese internment camps is remembered here by a stark "Soul Consoling Tower."

This one-block alleyway is stuffed with street art that is colorful, cultural, and intensely political.

Russian history in San Francisco.

A burnt orange monolithic dome structure perched on a hillside near Interstate 280.

Millions of years of oxidation make a drive down this winding Death Valley road surprisingly colorful.

The lowest point in North America is home to an undrinkable pool surrounded by fields of geometric salt flats.

Two rocks in a perpetual kiss and one of "the most romantic spot in America."

"Only the devil could play golf here."

Bonsai garden in Oakland is curated by the first non-Japanese female bonsai master in the United States.