A Saint Nicholas-themed ghost town in the Mojave desert.

Brightly colored 30-foot-tall totems light up the desert sky just outside Las Vegas.

The oldest lighthouse on America's west coast no longer needs keepers, yet they maintain the site anyhow.

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

Get up close to emus and ostriches, or buy their tasty meat.

A house built from trash known as the poor man's Hearst Castle.

Factory that once supported an entire company town of 350.

Coastal dunes, site of buried Egyptian movie set and former utopian colony.

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

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

A Mysterious Masonic tomb in San Luis Obispo.

A hotel and restaurant serving as the mecca of kitsch.

An alley covered with 20 years of bubble gum.

The ruins of the castle that chemicals built.

The home of one of California's most important horticulturalists wilts amidst a lovely park.

You might know it as the Overlook Hotel, but the inside is not going to be familiar.

A roaring, awe-inspiring double cascade of icy water flows through woodland Oregon like something out of a Tolkien novel.

A beautiful 62-acre Catholic shrine and botanical garden.

The seamy, underground secrets of Portland's criminal past.

The magic's in the hole!

One of the oldest reform schools in the United States, home to wayward boys such as Merle Haggard, now abandoned.

Seven ceramic sculptures are scattered around this California college campus.

A man-made island in scenic San Francisco Bay.

The restored and active Victorian-era final resting place of San Francisco.