Los Angeles51 places
- Griffith ObservatoryYes, it's the most obvious landmark in Los Angeles, and yes, it's genuinely worth it, and it has been free to everyone…
- La Brea Tar PitsIn the middle of the city, next to the art museums, cold black asphalt still bubbles up out of the ground the same way…
- Mount Wilson ObservatoryOn a peak above the city sits the telescope where a man looked out one night in the 1920s and found that the universe…
- The Getty CenterA cable tram carries you up out of the traffic to a hilltop city of white stone and gardens, with world-class art…
- The HuntingtonA railroad fortune bought a Gutenberg Bible, Gainsborough's Blue Boy, and a hundred and twenty acres of gardens, and…
- The Museum of Jurassic TechnologyA small museum on a Los Angeles boulevard shows you an ant with a fungus bursting from its head, a sculpture carved to…
- The Watts TowersAn Italian immigrant tile-setter spent thirty-three years building seventeen steel towers in his Watts backyard out of…
- Angels FlightThe world's shortest railway climbs a single downtown block, has done since 1901, and costs a dollar fifty.
- Antelope Valley Poppy ReserveIn the right spring, seventeen hundred acres of high-desert hills north of LA turn solid, blazing orange with…
- Baldwin Hills Scenic OverlookThe city's favorite outdoor stairmaster is 282 steep steps up a hill in the middle of LA, and the reward at the top is…
- Bob Baker Marionette TheaterThe oldest puppet theater in the country still puts on marionette shows where the puppeteers walk the characters right…
- Bronson CavesThe original Batcave is a short rock tunnel in Griffith Park, and it's been the secret entrance to a thousand movies…
- Center for Land Use InterpretationA storefront in Culver City is a museum about how humans use land, and it means that as broadly and strangely as it…
- Colorado Street BridgeA graceful arched bridge from 1913 curves 150 feet above the Arroyo Seco in Pasadena, beautiful enough to be a landmark…
- Descanso GardensUnder a canopy of native oaks in La Cañada grows one of the largest camellia forests in the hemisphere, and the reason…
- Devil's PunchbowlOn the desert edge of the San Gabriels, the San Andreas Fault has tilted whole slabs of sandstone up on end, and you…
- Eastern Columbia BuildingThe finest Art Deco building in Los Angeles is a thirteen-story tower of glossy turquoise on Broadway, topped by a…
- Echo Park LakeA little lake just uphill from downtown grows the largest bed of lotus flowers in the country, with pedal boats shaped…
- El Matador State BeachThe prettiest beach in Malibu is a small cove of sea stacks, arches, and caves you reach down a cliff, with barely room…
- Escondido FallsThe tallest waterfall in the Santa Monica Mountains hides at the end of a Malibu canyon, reached on a walk that starts…
- Franklin Canyon ParkThere's a quiet lake and six hundred acres of oak woodland hidden in the hills dead center in Los Angeles, and you've…
- Galco's Soda Pop StopAn old Italian grocery in Highland Park stocks more than seven hundred kinds of soda, most of them ones you've never…
- Hollyhock HouseFrank Lloyd Wright's first Los Angeles house crowns a hill in the middle of the city, and it's the only one of his LA…
- Hollywood Forever CemeteryOn summer nights, a few thousand people spread blankets on the lawn of a Hollywood cemetery and watch a movie projected…
- Korean Bell of FriendshipA seventeen-ton bronze bell in an ornate Korean pavilion sits on a windy bluff above the Pacific in San Pedro, a…
- Leimert Park VillageFor most of a century this small South LA village has been the cultural heart of Black Los Angeles, compared to Harlem…
- Los Angeles Central LibraryDowntown's third architectural treasure, alongside the Bradbury and Union Station, is the public library, and it's free…
- Los Angeles County ArboretumA hundred and twenty-seven acres of gardens in Arcadia come with about two hundred and fifty wild peacocks that wander…
- Murphy RanchIn a canyon above the Palisades are the graffiti-covered ruins of a compound built in the 1930s by Americans who…
- Musso & Frank GrillHollywood's oldest restaurant has been pouring martinis in the same red booths since 1919, and the ghosts at the bar…
- Norton Simon MuseumOne of the greatest private art collections ever assembled sits in Pasadena, holds Rembrandts and Van Goghs and a room…
- Olvera Street & El PuebloThe oldest corner of Los Angeles is a short brick market street off the original plaza, anchored by an adobe house…
- Point DumeA rocky headland juts out of the Malibu coast with a cove and tide pools below and, in winter, gray whales passing…
- Point Fermin LighthouseA gingerbread Victorian lighthouse from 1874 stands on the San Pedro bluffs, the twin of a lighthouse the atlas already…
- Self-Realization Fellowship Lake ShrineA spring-fed lake ringed by gardens and a windmill chapel hides off Sunset Boulevard, with a portion of Gandhi's ashes…
- Solstice CanyonAn easy Malibu canyon walk ends at the ruins of a modernist ranch house built into a waterfall, burned out and left to…
- Sunken CityA cliffside neighborhood in San Pedro slid into the ocean starting in 1929, and the broken streets and foundations are…
- Switzer FallsA shaded creek canyon in the mountains above Pasadena drops through granite pools to a fifty-foot waterfall, past the…
- The Bradbury BuildingBehind a plain brick front on a downtown corner is the most beautiful interior in Los Angeles, a five-story court of…
- The BroadA major contemporary-art museum downtown, wrapped in a honeycomb shell, is free to walk into, and it holds one of Yayoi…
- The Gamble HouseThe finest Arts and Crafts house in America is a wooden bungalow in Pasadena so perfectly made that architects come…
- The Getty VillaA recreated ancient Roman villa sits above the ocean at the edge of the Palisades, full of Greek and Roman antiquities…
- The Last BookstoreCalifornia's biggest used bookstore fills an old downtown bank, and upstairs the shelves curl into tunnels and arches…
- The Magic CastleBehind a hedge in Hollywood is a Victorian mansion full of magicians, and you can only get in if one of them invites…
- The Old LA ZooThe original Los Angeles Zoo closed in 1966 and was just left there, so now you can climb through the empty bear…
- The Velaslavasay PanoramaIn a 1910 theater in West Adams, an artist revived a dead nineteenth-century art form: a painting that wraps all the…
- The Venice CanalsA few blocks off the chaos of the Venice boardwalk is a silent neighborhood of real canals, with footbridges and ducks…
- The Wende MuseumA museum in a Cold War National Guard armory in Culver City holds the world's largest collection of things from East…
- The Wisdom TreeOne pine tree on a Hollywood ridgeline survived the fire that took everything around it in 2007, and people hike up to…
- Urban LightTwo hundred and two antique street lamps stand in a grid outside the art museum on Wilshire, lit every night, free to…
- Vasquez RocksThe tilted sandstone slabs where Captain Kirk fought the Gorn stand an hour north of LA, shoved up on end by the San…
San Francisco26 places
- Alcatraz IslandThe most famous prison in America sits on an island in the bay, and its fullest story isn't the cellblock but the…
- Baker BeachThe classic Golden Gate view from the sand, a disappearing cannon in the dunes behind it, and the beach where Burning…
- Chinatown (the alleys)The oldest Chinatown in the country, once you get off the souvenir street and into the alleys where it actually lives.
- Farallon Islands (by boat)Twenty-seven miles off the Golden Gate stand the "Devil's Teeth" — the wildest place in the Bay Area, home to the…
- Fort Funston200-foot sand bluffs at San Francisco's southwest corner where hang gliders launch off old coastal-defense batteries…
- Golden Gate ParkA thousand acres of made land, bigger than Central Park, holding the oldest Japanese garden in the country, a Victorian…
- Lands End & the Sutro Baths RuinsThe ruins of the largest swimming pool complex ever built, crumbling into the sea at the wildest corner of the city.
- North BeachThe old Italian quarter where the Beats set up shop, and still the best neighborhood in the city to wander on caffeine…
- 16th Avenue Tiled StepsA staircase in the far avenues that a whole neighborhood turned into a single sea-to-sky mosaic, and almost no visitor…
- Andy Goldsworthy in the PresidioThe largest collection of Andy Goldsworthy's land art in North America, hidden in a forest you have to walk to find.
- Bernal Heights SummitA bare grassy hill in the middle of San Francisco with a full 360° of the city — downtown, both bridges, the bay, San…
- Buena Vista Park's Tombstone GuttersThe rain gutters of San Francisco's oldest park are lined with broken Gold Rush-era tombstones — the leftovers from…
- Corona HeightsA bare red-rock crown above the Castro with a full downtown panorama — and on its flank, a wall of chert polished to a…
- Fort PointA Civil War fort tucked directly under the Golden Gate Bridge, with the great arch overhead built specifically so the…
- Glen Canyon ParkAn actual wild canyon in the middle of San Francisco — chert cliffs, a free-flowing creek, and resident coyotes — that…
- Ina Coolbrith ParkA vertical pocket garden stacked into the Russian Hill stairways with one of the city's finest bay views — named for…
- John McLaren ParkSan Francisco's second-largest park — grasslands, forest, an amphitheater, and a sky-blue water tower with one of the…
- Mount Davidson & the CrossThe highest natural point in San Francisco is a eucalyptus-forested peak most residents can't name, topped by a…
- Mount Sutro Cloud ForestA hundred-year-old eucalyptus cloud forest hidden in the dead center of San Francisco, best on the exact foggy days…
- Musée MécaniqueOne of the world's largest private collections of coin-operated antique arcade machines — a century of penny arcades…
- Palace of Fine ArtsA monumental Roman rotunda reflected in a lagoon, built as a fake ruin for a 1915 world's fair and the only building…
- Sutro Heights ParkA silver baron built a clifftop estate above the Cliff House, filled its gardens with two hundred statues, and opened…
- The Camera ObscuraA building shaped like a giant camera perches on the cliff by the old Cliff House — and inside, a rotating lens quietly…
- The Filbert StepsWhere Filbert Street hits Telegraph Hill it gives up on being a street entirely: 400-odd steps through private gardens…
- The MissionThe one part of San Francisco to walk with no plan. It's the warmest, densest, most argued-over square mile in the city.
- The Wave OrganA musical instrument you play by waiting for the tide, built out of a torn-down cemetery at the tip of a Marina jetty.
South Peninsula26 places
- Apple Jack'sAn 1870s dive bar in the La Honda redwoods, dark and creaky and unbothered, that's been watering loggers, bikers…
- Arizona Cactus GardenA hidden Victorian desert garden on the Stanford campus, a thousand cacti planted for the Stanfords in the 1880s, free…
- Buck's of WoodsideThe wildly kitschy Woodside diner where some of Silicon Valley's biggest deals got signed over pancakes, under a Soviet…
- Computer History MuseumThe world's biggest collection of old computers, including a hand-cranked Victorian calculating engine and the actual…
- Edgewood ParkA serpentine grassland that erupts into one of the Bay Area's best wildflower shows each spring, hidden between the…
- El Corte de Madera & the Tafoni MonolithA redwood mountain-bike preserve on Skyline hiding a sandstone monolith that weather carved into a giant honeycomb…
- FiloliA 1917 Georgian country estate and sixteen acres of formal gardens in the Woodside hills, so photogenic it played the…
- Hangar OneOne of the largest freestanding buildings ever raised, an eight-acre airship hangar so big fog forms inside near the…
- Hidden VillaA working organic farm in the Los Altos hills that opened the first youth hostel in the American West, and still rents…
- Los Trancos San Andreas Fault TrailA short loop that walks you straight down the San Andreas Fault, past a fence the 1906 earthquake shoved out of line.
- Palo Alto BaylandsThe largest undisturbed marsh left on San Francisco Bay, flat and free at the edge of Palo Alto, laced with boardwalks…
- Papua New Guinea Sculpture GardenA quiet grove near Stanford full of towering carved totems and a dugout canoe, made by New Guinea artists flown in to…
- Picchetti Ranch & WineryOne of the oldest surviving wineries in California still stands on the Monte Bello ridge above Cupertino — an 1870s…
- Portola Redwoods State ParkA deep, quiet redwood canyon at the far side of the Skyline hills that takes real effort to reach, so almost nobody…
- Pulgas Water TempleA Roman-style temple hidden behind a gate on a country road, built in 1934 to celebrate water arriving from 160 miles…
- Rancho San Antonio & Deer Hollow FarmThe most-loved trail network on the Peninsula hides a 160-year-old working homestead in its folds — a real farm with…
- Rodin Sculpture Garden (Cantor)Rodin's Gates of Hell, and the largest collection of his bronzes outside Paris, sitting free and outdoors on the…
- Russian Ridge & Borel HillThe highest named point in San Mateo County sits on an open grass ridge above Skyline — and in April it detonates into…
- Sawyer Camp Trail & Crystal SpringsA paved car-free trail running straight down the San Andreas Fault, along two reservoirs, past a laurel tree older than…
- The DishA giant Cold War radio telescope on a grassy hill, ringed by a paved loop that half of Palo Alto treats as its living…
- The Donkeys of Barron ParkTwo donkeys in a Palo Alto pasture, one of whom modeled for Shrek's Donkey.
- The Methuselah TreeAn 1,800-year-old redwood stands right at the edge of Skyline Boulevard, the biggest and oldest tree in these mountains…
- The Woodside StoreAt the bottom of Kings Mountain Road sits an 1854 general store that was also the post office, the saloon, the dentist…
- Villa MontalvoA senator built an Italian Mediterranean villa into the Saratoga foothills in 1912, filled it with carved Granada doors…
- Windy HillTwo bald grassy summits on the Skyline ridge with a full-circle view: bay and valley on one side, ridges rolling to the…
- Wunderlich ParkA redwood-and-oak forest above Woodside, threaded with old horse-estate trails, that stays quiet while the famous parks…
East Bay25 places
- East Brother Light StationA working 1874 Victorian lighthouse on its own tiny island in San Pablo Bay — run as a five-room inn where the…
- Mount Diablo SummitOn the right day you can stand on this East Bay summit and see the Farallon Islands out one side and Half Dome out the…
- Reinhardt Redwood Regional ParkShips entering the Golden Gate once navigated by redwoods on this Oakland ridge so huge they were visible 16 miles out…
- The Albany BulbA construction landfill that turned into an unofficial sculpture park, out on a spit in the bay.
- Black Diamond MinesNorthern California's largest coal mining district ran in these hills above Antioch — five vanished towns, a hilltop…
- Brooks IslandA whole island in the middle of the bay — 2,500-year-old Ohlone shellmound, a 160-foot summit, and Bing Crosby's old…
- Carquinez Scenic DriveThe old bluff-top road between Crockett and Martinez was too landslide-prone to keep as a through road — so the middle…
- Chabot Space & Science CenterThree historic telescopes in the Oakland hills — including a 36-inch reflector — open to the public for free every…
- Codornices Slide & the Rose GardenAcross the street from each other in the Berkeley hills: a WPA rose amphitheater with a Golden Gate view, and a 40-foot…
- Coyote HillsA knot of grassy hills on the Fremont bayshore where 2,000-year-old Ohlone shellmounds meet tule marshes — and one of…
- Del ValleA five-mile lake folded into the golden hills south of Livermore — the East Bay's best swimming water, and the back…
- Grizzly Peak & "The Wall"The pullouts along Grizzly Peak Boulevard serve the East Bay's definitive sunset view — and the one locals actually…
- Heinold's First and Last ChanceAn 1884 saloon built from a whaling ship's timbers, where the 1906 earthquake tilted the floor so steeply your beer…
- Indian Rock ParkA volcanic rock the size of a building sits in the middle of a Berkeley neighborhood, with staircases carved into its…
- Lake Merritt & Children's FairylandAmerica's first official wildlife refuge (1870) is a saltwater lagoon in downtown Oakland — ringed by a light necklace…
- Little Yosemite (Sunol Wilderness)A boulder-choked gorge on Alameda Creek in the Sunol backcountry that early park boosters named "Little Yosemite" —…
- Morgan TerritoryThe emptiest of the East Bay's big parklands, on Mount Diablo's hidden back side — reached by a one-lane mountain road…
- Mountain View Cemetery (Oakland)Frederick Law Olmsted — the man who designed Central Park — laid out this Oakland cemetery in 1863, and locals treat it…
- Niles (Fremont)Before Hollywood, there was Niles: the small-town main street where Charlie Chaplin filmed "The Tramp," with a…
- Point IsabelOne of the largest off-leash dog parks in the country — 23 acres of Richmond bayshore where a half-million dog visits a…
- Port CostaA dead-end former grain port on the Carquinez Strait that time forgot: one street, a Victorian roadhouse, and a…
- Rosie the Riveter NHP (Richmond)Richmond built 747 ships in four years — a Liberty ship in under five days at the record — and the national park…
- Sibley Volcanic PreserveA ten-million-year-old volcano lies in the Oakland hills — tipped on its side by the Hayward Fault so you can walk…
- The Hayward Fault WalkDowntown Hayward's sidewalks are slowly tearing themselves apart in real time — the Hayward Fault creeps right through…
- Tilden Park Steam TrainsTwo separate miniature railways sit side by side in the Berkeley hills — a coal-fired steam line that hauls you through…
San Diego24 places
- Anza-Borrego & the Desert SculpturesThe largest state park in the country runs on badlands and slot canyons and a wildflower bloom that only shows up some…
- Balboa ParkThe biggest urban cultural park in the country, bigger than Central Park, is a mile of Spanish-fantasy architecture…
- Palomar ObservatoryFor twenty-six years the largest telescope on Earth sat on a mountain in the back country of San Diego County, and you…
- Torrey Pines State Natural ReserveThe rarest pine in North America grows wild in only two places on Earth, and one of them is a set of eroded sea cliffs…
- Annie's CanyonA narrow sandstone slot canyon hides in a coastal lagoon between two beach towns, tight enough that you climb out…
- Cabrillo National MonumentAt the tip of Point Loma, where the first European stepped ashore on the West Coast, are the best tide pools in…
- Chicano ParkUnder the ramps of the Coronado Bridge, the concrete pylons hold the largest collection of Chicano murals in the world…
- Cowles Mountain & Mission TrailsThe highest point in the city of San Diego is a summit hike inside the largest municipal park in California, and half…
- Desert View Tower & Boulder ParkA seventy-foot stone tower and a maze of boulders carved into animals sit together off the interstate near the Mexican…
- Galleta Meadows SculpturesScattered free across the open desert around Borrego Springs are a hundred and thirty giant rusted-metal animals…
- JulianAn hour up into the mountains east of San Diego is a gold-rush town that ran out of gold and reinvented itself around…
- La Jolla Cove & the SealsA colony of wild sea lions and harbor seals hauls out on the rocks and little beaches of La Jolla, close enough to…
- Lake Hodges BridgeA thousand-foot ribbon of concrete just sixteen inches thick floats across a reservoir north of San Diego, and it's the…
- Mount LagunaAn hour east of San Diego the desert gives way to a mile-high forest of vanilla-scented pines, dark enough at night…
- Spruce Street Suspension BridgeA wooden footbridge from 1912 hangs on steel cables over a wooded canyon in the middle of San Diego, and it sways when…
- Star of IndiaThe oldest sailing ship in the world that still actually sails is tied up on the San Diego waterfront, and once a year…
- Stonewall Peak & CuyamacaAn hour east of San Diego the land climbs into a pine-and-oak mountain range, and a chain-assisted scramble tops out on…
- Sunny Jim's Sea CaveThe only sea cave in California you can reach on foot is at the bottom of a hand-dug tunnel that starts inside a La…
- Sunset CliffsA mile and a half of sandstone bluffs on the edge of Point Loma, cut into arches and sea caves, and about the best…
- Swami's & the Self-Realization FellowshipA world-famous surf break named itself after the swami whose ashram sits on the bluff above it, and the ashram's…
- The Giant DipperA wooden roller coaster from 1925 still rattles along the sand at Mission Beach, one of the last of its kind and a…
- The Salk InstituteLouis Kahn's most famous building is a bare travertine courtyard split by a single thin line of water that runs…
- Torrey Pines GliderportOn the cliffs above Black's Beach, people have been throwing themselves off the edge under a wing since 1936, and you…
- Windansea BeachA rocky La Jolla surf beach guarded by a little palm-frond shack from 1946 that's now an official historical landmark…
Marin21 places
- Mount TamalpaisThe mountain the whole Bay Area looks up at, with a fern-and-redwood canyon of wooden ladders on one side and the open…
- The Marin HeadlandsThe most photographed view of the Golden Gate Bridge, and behind it a whole wild headland of old gun batteries, a…
- Angel IslandAn island in the middle of the bay with a 360-degree view of the whole region and a haunting immigration station where…
- BolinasThe coastal town so committed to being left alone that residents kept tearing down the highway sign pointing to it.
- Cataract FallsAfter winter rain, a creek off Mount Tamalpais tumbles down a mossy fern-walled staircase in waterfall after waterfall…
- Kirby CoveA hidden cove tucked directly beneath the Marin end of the Golden Gate Bridge — a coarse-sand beach framed by cypress…
- The Bay ModelA working scale model of the entire San Francisco Bay, the size of two football fields, with tides that cycle every…
- Bon Tempe & the Mt Tam LakesMount Tamalpais hides a chain of five reservoir lakes on its north flank — pine-ringed, trout-stocked, eagle-visited —…
- China CampA 19th-century Chinese shrimp-fishing village survives whole on a quiet San Rafael cove — pier, cabins, and all —…
- Marin County Civic CenterFrank Lloyd Wright's last great building, a long pink-and-blue arcade draped across three hills, that Hollywood keeps…
- Marin Museum of Bicycling & MTB Hall of FameA Fairfax museum on the exact ground where mountain biking was invented, home to the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame.
- Muir Woods & Muir BeachThe most famous old-growth redwoods near the city, awe-inspiring and reservation-only crowded, with a quieter beach and…
- Museum of International PropagandaA small, free San Rafael museum of a century's worth of state propaganda, one couple's unsettling collection of…
- Nike Missile Site SF-88The only fully restored Nike missile base in the country, where docents raise an actual Cold War nuclear missile out of…
- Point Bonita LighthouseThe only lighthouse in America you reach by crossing a suspension bridge — out a hand-carved rock tunnel and over a…
- Ring MountainA Tiburon ridge with 2,400-year-old Native carvings pecked into the boulders, a wildflower found nowhere else on Earth…
- Stinson BeachThe Bay Area's classic beach day: a long arc of sand under Mount Tam, water warm enough to actually swim on a good day…
- Tennessee Valley & Tennessee CoveA flat valley walk in the Marin Headlands that ends at a black-sand cove named for a gold-rush steamship that wrecked…
- The Inkwells & Lagunitas CreekA set of dark rock pools on Lagunitas Creek that flips identity twice a year: swimming hole in summer, and in winter…
- The Sausalito HouseboatsA floating neighborhood of wildly individual houseboats on the Sausalito waterfront, the mellow, arty remnant of a…
- The Tourist Club (Die Naturfreunde)A Bavarian-style lodge hidden on the side of Mount Tam that pours cold beer on a sunny deck, but only for hikers, and…
Peninsula Coast21 places
- Año NuevoA windswept point where thousands of elephant seals haul out to fight, breed, and molt, reachable in winter only on…
- Fitzgerald Marine ReserveOne of the richest tide-pool reefs in California, where a low tide turns a mile of rock into a live aquarium.
- Mavericks & Pillar PointThe wave a local surfed alone for fifteen years before the world found out, and one of the biggest breaks on earth.
- PescaderoA two-street farm town in the fog-and-redwood country where people drive an hour for artichoke soup and warm garlic…
- Pigeon Point LighthouseOne of the tallest lighthouses on the West Coast, with a hostel in the keepers' houses and a hot tub bolted to the edge…
- Alice's RestaurantThe wooden roadhouse where Skyline meets Highway 84, and every motorcycle and road bike in the Bay Area seems to end up…
- Alpine Inn (Rossotti's)An 1852 roadhouse beer garden, second-oldest tavern in California, that also happens to be where the internet took its…
- Bean Hollow & Pebble BeachA beach of tiny polished pebbles and cliffs eaten into honeycomb, a short walk apart, that nearly everyone drives past.
- Butano State ParkA whole redwood canyon folded into the hills behind Pescadero that most coast traffic drives straight past — the quiet…
- Cowell-Purisima TrailA flat bluff-top trail south of Half Moon Bay that runs the cliff edge past working farm fields to a hidden pocket…
- Devil's Slide TrailA stretch of old Highway 1 so treacherous they finally drilled a tunnel around it, now a flat cliff-edge trail you get…
- Half Moon BayThe coast's main town: a walkable old Main Street, a long state beach, and the harbor where the Mavericks legend lives.
- Ken Kesey's La HondaA log cabin in the redwoods off Highway 84 where the 1960s more or less caught fire: Ken Kesey's place, where the Acid…
- Memorial Park (Pescadero Creek)San Mateo County's oldest park: a grove of genuine old-growth redwoods on Pescadero Creek with a summer swimming hole…
- Moss Beach DistilleryA Prohibition speakeasy on a bluff over the ocean, still supposedly haunted by the jilted "Blue Lady," Northern…
- Old Haul RoadA gentle gravel rail-trail through the redwoods on the bed of an old logging railroad, which most Bay Area riders never…
- Point Montara Lighthouse HostelA working lighthouse where the old keepers' quarters are now cheap bunks a few feet from the surf.
- Purisima Creek RedwoodsA deep redwood canyon on the coast side of Skyline that most people blow past on the way to the beach, with trails from…
- Rancho Corral de TierraThousands of acres of wild coastal hills rising straight up behind the Highway 1 towns, a big empty backcountry hiding…
- San Gregorio General StoreAn 1889 general store that's really a saloon with live music, stiff Bloody Marys, and shelves of books, boots, and cast…
- The Bike HutAn unlocked garage on a farm road, stocked with snacks, coffee, and spare tubes, that runs entirely on the honor system…
Big Sur20 places
- Point Lobos State Natural ReserveThe one Big Sur stop worth setting an alarm for, and the reason to be at a gate at 8am on vacation.
- Esalen Hot SpringsCliffside hot springs over the open Pacific, open to outsiders for exactly two hours in the dead of night.
- Henry Miller Memorial LibraryA bookstore with no sign, free coffee, a ping-pong table, and a lawn where Arcade Fire has played.
- Limekiln State ParkThe park most people blow past on the way to somewhere more famous, and the one a few of them come back raving about.
- Tassajara Zen Mountain CenterA Zen monastery and clothing-optional hot springs at the end of fourteen miles of dirt road, open to outsiders four…
- Vicente Flat & Cone PeakA backpacking route from the edge of the highway to the tallest coastal mountain in the lower 48, and a redwood camp…
- Andrew Molera State ParkThe big Big Sur park with no scenic drive-in, so the crowds thin the second you're out of the parking lot and across…
- Deetjen's Big Sur InnA ramshackle Norwegian village of hand-built redwood cabins with thin walls, no TVs, and a candlelit dining room that's…
- Ewoldsen TrailThe actual hike in the park everyone drives to for a ten-minute waterfall photo, and the one that earns the trip.
- Garrapata State ParkNo sign, no entrance, no lot. Just numbered gates on the shoulder of Highway 1 and some of the best coast north of Big…
- McWay FallsAn 80-foot waterfall that drops straight onto a beach you're not allowed to walk on.
- NepentheA clifftop terrace with a fifty-mile view that Orson Welles bought on a whim and never once slept in.
- New Camaldoli HermitageA working Benedictine monastery on a ridge two miles up a private road, where you can buy honey the monks made and just…
- Partington CoveAn unmarked trail off a blind pullout that drops through a rock tunnel to a cove most people driving past never know is…
- Pfeiffer BeachPurple sand and an offshore rock with a keyhole the winter sun fires straight through, reached by a road with no sign.
- Pfeiffer Falls & Valley ViewA short redwood loop to a 60-foot fall, the easy leg-stretch inside the park most people only drive through to reach…
- Point Sur LighthouseA working lighthouse stranded on a 361-foot volcanic rock, and the only one on the coast you can walk through, on a…
- Salmon Creek FallsA 120-foot waterfall a five-minute walk from a highway pullout at the far south end, where almost nobody bothers to…
- San Carpóforo BeachThe wide, driftwood-strewn beach at the very bottom of Big Sur that almost nobody stops for, because there's no sign…
- Sand Dollar Beach & Jade CoveThe one place on 90 miles of cliff coast where you can walk a long, open beach, and dig real jade out of the surf next…
Orange County17 places
- Black Star CanyonA remote canyon in the Santa Ana Mountains draws hikers with a hidden waterfall and a dark reputation, though the story…
- Bolsa Chica Ecological ReserveThe largest saltwater marsh on the California coast survives right across the highway from the Huntington Beach surf…
- California Scenario (Noguchi Garden)One of the country's best sculpture gardens is a free acre and a half of desert, forest, and stone tucked between two…
- Christ Cathedral (Crystal Cathedral)A cathedral built entirely of glass, ten thousand panes of it, rises out of a Garden Grove parking lot, once the home…
- Crystal CoveA colony of forty-six hand-built 1930s beach cottages survives on an Orange County cove, a rustic slice of old…
- Heisler ParkA bluff-top park strung along the Laguna cliffs, with stairs down to some of the best tide pools in Southern California…
- Holy Jim FallsA rough dirt road into the Santa Ana Mountains ends at a trail to a hidden waterfall named for a foul-mouthed beekeeper…
- Little SaigonThe largest Vietnamese community in the world outside Vietnam fills a stretch of Orange County, built by refugees who…
- Los Rios Historic DistrictThe oldest neighborhood in California is a short, shaded street of adobe houses across the tracks from the San Juan…
- Mission San Juan CapistranoThe oldest building still in use in California is a small chapel here, the only one where Junípero Serra is documented…
- Modjeska House (Arden)A world-famous Shakespearean actress had one of America's top architects build her a country house in a hidden Orange…
- Old Towne OrangeThe largest historic district in California is an 1880s downtown built around a traffic circle, and it's now the…
- Pageant of the MastersEvery summer in a Laguna canyon, hundreds of volunteers hold perfectly still inside giant frames so that, for a few…
- Sherman Library & GardensA full city block in Corona del Mar hides a lush botanical garden and research library, built by one man who kept…
- The WedgeAt the end of the Balboa Peninsula, waves fold back on themselves against a jetty and stack into freak peaks up to…
- Upper Newport BayTucked behind the yacht harbors of Newport Beach is one of the last big estuaries in Southern California, loud with…
- Victoria Beach Pirate TowerA sixty-foot stone tower shaped like a castle turret stands on a Laguna Beach cove, and the tide has to be out for you…
Central Valley16 places
- California State Railroad MuseumTwenty-one lavishly restored locomotives and cars — some dating to 1863 — fill a cavernous hall in Old Sacramento, in…
- Carrizo PlainThe last great piece of the grassland sea that once filled the Central Valley — where superblooms turn fifty miles of…
- The American River ParkwayA paved trail runs 32 unbroken miles up a river through the middle of Sacramento, one of the longest purpose-built bike…
- Castle Air MuseumEighty-odd military aircraft sit out on a field in the Central Valley, an SR-71 and a B-52 among them, on the old…
- Colonel Allensworth State Historic ParkThe first California town founded, financed, and governed by Black Americans stands restored on the valley floor —…
- Crocker Art MuseumThe oldest art museum in the West sits in a Sacramento railroad baron's 1872 mansion, gallery upstairs and a bowling…
- César E. Chávez National MonumentThe farm-labor leader who changed California is buried in a rose garden at the union headquarters he built in the…
- Feather FallsA 410-foot waterfall pours off a sheer cliff in the Sierra foothills above Lake Oroville, and a viewing platform hangs…
- Forestiere Underground GardensA Sicilian immigrant spent forty years hand-digging ten acres of rooms, courtyards, and grottoes beneath Fresno — with…
- Jepson PrairieFor a few weeks each spring, one of California's last great vernal-pool prairies performs its trick: as the seasonal…
- Modesto & the American Graffiti CruiseThe cruising culture George Lucas grew up in became American Graffiti, and Modesto still cruises McHenry Avenue every…
- North Table Mountain & Phantom FallsFor a few weeks each spring, a lava mesa above Oroville turns solid wildflower and pours waterfalls off its cliffs; by…
- Sacramento National Wildlife RefugeOn winter afternoons a cloud of snow geese lifts off a Central Valley marsh all at once, loud enough to feel, and you…
- Sutter ButtesA ring of eroded volcanic domes rises 2,000 feet straight out of the flat Sacramento Valley — often called the world's…
- Sutter's FortThe adobe fort a Swiss immigrant built in 1839 became the seed the whole city of Sacramento grew around, and it's still…
- The Old Sacramento UndergroundAfter floods kept drowning it, Sacramento jacked its whole downtown up a full story in the 1860s, and you can still…
Inland Empire15 places
- San Gorgonio Mountain (Old Greyback)The highest mountain in Southern California isn't in the Sierra. It's Old Greyback, an 11,503-foot dome above the…
- Big Falls (Forest Falls)The tallest year-round waterfall in Southern California drops some five hundred feet down a mountainside above the…
- Bonita FallsA hundred-foot waterfall hides up a side canyon in Lytle Creek, unsigned and easy to miss, the second-tallest fall in…
- California Citrus State Historic ParkA living grove of the oranges that built Southern California survives as a state park in Riverside, rows of trees kept…
- Cucamonga PeakThe peak that looms over Rancho Cucamonga is the hardest and best of the Inland Empire's local summits, a near-vertical…
- Deep Creek Hot SpringsA string of natural hot pools sits in a desert canyon along the Pacific Crest Trail, a hard walk from any road, beloved…
- Etiwanda Falls & North Etiwanda PreserveThe Inland Empire's most-hiked waterfall pours off the San Gabriel foothills right above Rancho Cucamonga, close enough…
- Heart Rock (Seeley Creek)A near-perfect heart, a few feet across, is worn into the rock beside a small waterfall on Seeley Creek, and no one…
- IdyllwildAn alpine arts town sits in the pines an hour above the desert, under the granite rock where modern American climbing…
- Kimberly Crest House & GardensA French château with a stone tower and terraced Italian gardens looks down over Redlands, built by citrus money and…
- Lincoln Memorial ShrineThe only museum devoted to Abraham Lincoln west of the Mississippi is a small limestone octagon in Redlands, its walls…
- Mount RubidouxThe hill Riverside walks up for exercise is also where the country's first outdoor Easter sunrise service was held…
- Oak GlenAn hour from the desert heat of the Inland Empire, a mile up in the mountains, sits an unlikely pocket of apple country…
- The Mission InnA hotel keeper spent fifty-five years turning a small adobe boarding house into a full-block fantasia of towers, flying…
- Wigwam Motel (VillageYou can still sleep in a concrete teepee on Route 66 in Rialto, one of the last three survivors of a lost roadside…
Santa Barbara13 places
- Channel Islands National ParkTake a boat out from Ventura to a chain of wild islands where a fox the size of a house cat lives and nothing else on…
- La Purísima MissionEvery other California mission is a church with some ruins around it. La Purísima is the whole thing, rebuilt board by…
- Carpinteria Bluffs & the Harbor Seal RookeryOn the bluffs at the edge of Carpinteria, a stretch of beach fills every winter with hundreds of harbor seals hauling…
- Chumash Painted CaveUp a narrow mountain road above Santa Barbara, a small sandstone cave holds Chumash paintings still vivid in red…
- Cold Spring TavernA stagecoach stop from 1868 is still standing on the old road over the mountains, still serving travelers, now a rustic…
- Figueroa MountainIn the right spring, the slopes above the Santa Ynez wine country turn solid with lupine and poppies, and the drive up…
- Ganna Walska LotuslandA Polish opera singer married six times spent forty years turning a Montecito estate into nineteen theatrical gardens…
- Gaviota Wind CavesA short, steep climb above the coast west of Santa Barbara ends at a set of sandstone caves the wind hollowed out of…
- Guadalupe Dunes & the Lost City of DeMilleCecil B. DeMille built the largest movie set in history out here in 1923, then had the whole Egyptian city torn down…
- Jalama Beach & the Jalama BurgerAt the end of a fourteen-mile road that goes nowhere else sits a windswept county beach, a campground full of regulars…
- Lizard's MouthA field of wind-carved sandstone boulders on the ridge above Santa Barbara has the best view of the city, and you get…
- Mission Santa Barbara (Queen of the Missions)The one California mission with two matching bell towers looks down over Santa Barbara from its hill, and Franciscan…
- Santa Barbara County CourthouseA working county courthouse is one of the most beautiful public buildings in the country, and you can ride an elevator…
South Bay13 places
- Henry W. Coe State ParkThe largest state park in Northern California, 87,000 acres of empty ridgelines an hour from San Jose, and almost…
- Lick Observatory (Mt Hamilton)The world's first permanently staffed mountaintop observatory crowns the Bay Area's highest peak — and James Lick, the…
- Mount Hamilton Road (Hwy 130)Nineteen miles and roughly 365 turns, graded gently enough for horse-drawn telescope wagons in 1876 — which is exactly…
- Alum Rock ParkCalifornia's oldest municipal park hides the stone ruins of a Victorian health spa — mineral-spring grottoes still…
- Drawbridge (ghost town)The Bay Area has an actual ghost town: a former hunting-resort village in the South Bay marshes, abandoned since 1979…
- Hakone GardensOne of the oldest Japanese-style residential gardens in the Western Hemisphere, terraced into a Saratoga hillside since…
- Mount MadonnaA redwood mountain between Gilroy and the sea, where white deer descended from a Hearst gift graze beside the ruins of…
- Mount UmunhumA Santa Cruz Mountains summit crowned by a five-story concrete Cold War radar cube, closed to the public for 60 years…
- New Almaden & Quicksilver ParkThe Gold Rush ran on mercury, and the mercury came from here: California's oldest and richest mine, with its company…
- Rosicrucian Egyptian MuseumThe largest collection of Egyptian artifacts on the US West Coast — real mummies included — built and run by a mystical…
- San Jose Flea Market"La Pulga" — one of the largest open-air markets in America since 1960 — is eight lanes of produce rows, taco smoke…
- Uvas CanyonA pocket canyon behind Morgan Hill stacks half a dozen waterfalls along a single one-mile loop — the South Bay's…
- Winchester Mystery HouseA rifle heiress spent 38 years building a mansion with staircases into ceilings and doors onto two-story drops — and…
Palm Springs12 places
- Mount San Jacinto Peak & Cactus to CloudsFrom the desert floor in Palm Springs, one of the steepest big climbs in the country rises more than ten thousand feet…
- Palm Springs Aerial TramwayIn ten minutes a rotating cable car lifts you from the desert floor to an alpine forest eight thousand feet up, and the…
- The Indian CanyonsThe largest palm oasis on Earth is a fifteen-mile canyon of native fan palms along a desert stream, on Cahuilla land…
- Cabot's Pueblo MuseumOne man spent decades hand-building a four-story, thirty-five-room Hopi-style pueblo out of other people's cast-offs…
- Ladder Canyon & Painted CanyonIn the crumbling badlands where the San Andreas Fault crosses the desert near the Salton Sea, a hike threads up a slot…
- Moorten Botanical GardenA one-acre family cactus garden in Palm Springs holds three thousand kinds of desert plant and the world's first…
- Pioneertown & Pappy and Harriet'sIn 1946 a group of Western movie stars built a fake 1880s town in the high desert to film in and live in, and it's…
- Shields Date GardenA 1924 date farm in Indio serves a date milkshake that tastes like caramel and, in its own little theater, screens a…
- Sunnylands (the Annenberg Estate)Behind a pink wall in Rancho Mirage sits the mid-century estate where presidents and kings came to talk, its gardens…
- Tahquitz CanyonA sixty-foot waterfall runs down a canyon on Cahuilla land minutes from downtown Palm Springs, in a place their oldest…
- Thousand Palms OasisThe San Andreas Fault pushes groundwater to the surface in the middle of the desert here, and native fan palms have…
- Whitewater PreserveA cold river runs year-round through a canyon on the desert's edge, and around it a former trout farm has become one of…
Eastern Sierra11 places
- Ancient Bristlecone Pine ForestA grove of trees near the top of the White Mountains has been alive since before the pyramids, and the Forest Service…
- Mono LakeOne of the oldest lakes on the continent — at least 760,000 years in its basin — twice as salty as the ocean, ringed by…
- Alabama HillsA field of rounded orange boulders sits at the foot of the highest mountain in the Lower 48, and Hollywood has been…
- BodieThe best-preserved ghost town in the American West sits at 8,400 feet east of the Sierra — 200 buildings frozen…
- Convict LakeA glacial lake pinned against a 12,000-foot wall of banded rock, named for an 1871 shootout where escaped Carson City…
- Devils Postpile & Rainbow FallsA cliff of basalt columns so geometrically perfect it looks stacked by hand — 60-foot hexagonal posts a glacier sheared…
- Manzanar National Historic SiteBetween the highway and the Sierra wall, the government held eleven thousand of its own citizens behind barbed wire for…
- Thousand Island LakeAn alpine lake scattered with rocky islets sits under Banner Peak, and it's the reflection Ansel Adams made famous.
- Big Pine LakesA chain of impossibly turquoise lakes sits below the southernmost glacier in the country, colored by the rock the ice…
- Hot Creek Geological SiteA trout stream runs straight through the floor of a live volcanic caldera — boiling turquoise pools erupt in the…
- Little Lakes ValleyThe most alpine lakes you can reach for the least climbing in the whole Sierra: a nearly flat trail from the highest…
Gold Country11 places
- Calaveras Big TreesThe grove that introduced the world to giant sequoias — and promptly cut the biggest one down and turned its stump into…
- Chaw'se Indian Grinding RockA slab of limestone in the Sierra foothills is dimpled with 1,185 grinding holes, the most of any bedrock mortar site…
- Columbia State Historic ParkA whole gold-rush town survives with no cars in it, costumed shopkeepers working the same trades, and a stagecoach…
- Auburn Confluence & Foresthill BridgeTwo forks of the American River meet in a canyon below the tallest bridge in California — 730 feet of steel built for a…
- Black Chasm CavernA Gold Country cave holds more than ten thousand helictites — crystals that ignore gravity, twisting sideways and up…
- Coloma & the Gold DiscoveryThe exact spot where California began: James Marshall's sawmill tailrace on the American River, where a glint in the…
- Hidden Falls Regional ParkTwelve hundred acres of foothill oak woodland north of Auburn, laced with thirty miles of trail and a pair of creek…
- HornitosA Mexican-founded gold town that outlived its neighbors and then just stopped — iron-doored ruins around an empty…
- Knights Ferry Covered BridgeThe longest covered bridge west of the Mississippi crosses the Stanislaus at a gold-rush town most people have never…
- Nevada City & the South YubaThe best-preserved Gold Rush town in the Sierra foothills, all gas lamps and balconied Victorians — with the emerald…
- Preston CastleA 120-room Romanesque castle rises over the Gold Country town of Ione — built in 1894 not as a mansion but as a reform…
Santa Cruz11 places
- Castle Rock State ParkHigh on the Santa Cruz Mountains' crest, wind and rain have hollowed the sandstone into honeycombed caves and bulbous…
- Forest of Nisene MarksThe epicenter of the earthquake that stopped the 1989 World Series is a small sign in the woods, and you can hike to it.
- Wilder RanchA perfectly preserved 1890s dairy ranch sits at the foot of a staircase of fault-lifted coastal terraces just north of…
- Big Basin RedwoodsCalifornia's first state park — the 1902 victory that started redwood conservation — burned almost entirely in 2020…
- Ghost Railroad of the Santa Cruz MountainsA mainline railroad once tunneled straight through the Santa Cruz Mountains — mile-long bores, resort stops, whole…
- Henry Cowell Redwoods & the Garden of EdenOld-growth redwoods you can walk in twenty flat minutes — and downstream, the San Lorenzo River pools into genuine…
- Natural Bridges & West CliffEach winter thousands of monarch butterflies hang in dripping orange clusters in a eucalyptus grove behind the beach —…
- Roaring Camp RailroadsCentury-old steam locomotives haul you up some of the steepest railroad grades in North America, straight through…
- SS Palo Alto (the Cement Ship)A concrete ocean tanker — built when WWI steel ran short — has been beached at the end of the Seacliff pier since 1930…
- The Giant Dipper (Santa Cruz Boardwalk)A 1924 wooden roller coaster — a National Historic Landmark still running its original half-mile of lumber — anchors…
- The Mystery SpotA tilted shack in the redwoods where balls roll uphill and people lean past falling — a 1940s roadside "gravitational…
South Coast11 places
- Montaña de Oro State ParkOne of California's largest and least-tamed state parks: eight thousand acres of golden cliffs, sea caves, and…
- Morro RockA 581-foot volcanic plug rises straight out of the water at the harbor mouth, sacred to two tribes and closed to…
- Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal RookeryThousands of elephant seals sprawled on a beach a few feet below a boardwalk, for free, any day of the year.
- The Madonna InnA highway builder opened a hotel in 1958, painted nearly all of it pink, gave each of its 110 rooms a different…
- Bubblegum AlleyA downtown alley in San Luis Obispo has both walls packed with decades of chewed gum, fifteen feet high and seventy…
- Harmony (pop. 18)A whole town of eighteen people sits just off Highway 1, named Harmony as a peace treaty, where Hearst used to stop for…
- Hearst Castle & the San Simeon ZebrasA newspaper baron's marble hilltop palace, and the zebras from his private zoo still grazing the ranch below it, for…
- Moonstone Beach (Cambria)A bluff-top boardwalk where you hunt for moonstones, watch otters, and drop into tide pools, all in an easy mile and a…
- Nitt Witt RidgeThe poor man's Hearst Castle: a hillside palace one man built by hand over fifty years out of beer cans, abalone…
- Poly Canyon (the Architecture Graveyard)A canyon behind Cal Poly holds sixty years of student-built experimental structures — a shell house, a bridge house…
- Ragged Point & Black Swift FallsThe cliff where Big Sur begins or ends, with a brutal little trail down to a black-sand beach and a 300-foot waterfall…
North Peninsula10 places
- ColmaA town where the dead outnumber the living by more than a thousand to one, built entirely to bury San Francisco's.
- Mori PointA dramatic Pacifica headland of cliffs and hidden ponds, a short walk off the highway, that most people speeding…
- Mussel RockThe exact spot where the San Andreas Fault dives into the Pacific, now a hang-gliding launch perched on top of an old…
- Nike Missile Site SF-51The abandoned concrete bones of a Cold War missile base on a Pacifica ridge, now a windswept graffiti gallery.
- San Bruno MountainA wild mountain marooned in the middle of the urban peninsula, with rare butterflies and a summit view from the ocean…
- San Pedro Valley & Brooks FallsTwenty-five minutes from San Francisco, a three-tier waterfall drops 175 feet down a Pacifica canyon each winter — and…
- Sign HillA hillside spelling out "SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO THE INDUSTRIAL CITY" in giant concrete letters, with a trail that climbs…
- Sweeney Ridge & the Bay Discovery SiteThe ridge where a lost Spanish expedition first laid eyes on San Francisco Bay, now a windswept hike with the whole…
- The Broderick-Terry Duel SiteTwo stone pillars ten paces apart in a Daly City park mark the last great American duel, where a sitting US senator was…
- The Pacifica Taco BellThe only Taco Bell with a walk-up window for surfers and a beach out the back door.
Wine Country10 places
- Safari WestFour hundred acres of Sonoma hills run as an African savanna — giraffes, rhinos, cheetahs — with luxury safari tents…
- Armstrong RedwoodsWine country's old-growth grove: a 1,400-year-old giant named for the lumberman who couldn't bring himself to cut it…
- Castello di AmorosaOne man spent $40 million and fifteen years building an authentically medieval Tuscan castle in Calistoga — 107 rooms…
- Charles M. Schulz MuseumCharles Schulz drew Peanuts in Santa Rosa for thirty years — and the museum across from his beloved ice rink holds the…
- di Rosa Center for Contemporary ArtA former vineyard turned into 200 acres of contemporary art, with sculpture out in the meadows, galleries by a lake…
- Mount St. Helena & the Silverado SquatRobert Louis Stevenson spent his honeymoon squatting in an abandoned mine bunkhouse on this mountain above Calistoga —…
- Old Faithful Geyser of CaliforniaOne of the few geysers on Earth that erupts on a reliable clock, every few minutes, in a Calistoga field shared with…
- Sugarloaf Ridge & the Ferguson ObservatoryA state park in the Sonoma hills holds the largest observatory in the West built purely for the public, under some of…
- The Petrified ForestGiant redwoods turned entirely to stone by a volcanic eruption three million years ago, lying where they fell, near…
- Wolf House (Jack London Park)The stone ruins of the dream mansion Jack London built and never got to live in, burned to the ground days before he…
Mendocino9 places
- City of Ten Thousand BuddhasOne of the largest Buddhist monastic communities in the Western Hemisphere occupies a former state mental hospital…
- Jughandle Ecological StaircaseA single trail near Mendocino climbs a "staircase" of five sea terraces — each one about 100,000 years older than the…
- MendocinoA New England village on a California headland — saltbox houses and redwood water towers on a bluff wrapped on three…
- Boonville & the Boontling LanguageAn isolated valley town invented its own language in the 1890s, some 1,600 words of it, and spent the next century…
- Bowling Ball BeachAt the right low tide, a Mendocino beach reveals rows of near-perfect stone spheres — two to five feet across — lined…
- Hendy Woods & the HermitTwo groves of thousand-year-old redwoods sit in the middle of Anderson Valley's wine country, and a Russian hermit once…
- Montgomery WoodsAn old-growth redwood grove that briefly held the world's tallest known tree — reached by a mountain road so…
- Point Arena & the Stornetta LandsThe tallest lighthouse on the Pacific coast stands where the San Andreas Fault runs out to sea — beside miles of public…
- The Skunk TrainA logging railroad from 1885 still climbs off the Mendocino coast into the redwoods, and you can ride it in a rail…
Ventura9 places
- Santa PaulaA citrus town that time mostly left alone still calls itself the Citrus Capital of the World, its main street lined…
- Big Sycamore Canyon & La Jolla Valley (Point Mugu)Where the Santa Monica Mountains meet the sea at the Ventura county line, a canyon of old sycamores runs inland to one…
- Mission Basilica San BuenaventuraThe ninth of California's missions, and the last one Junípero Serra founded before he died, still stands as a working…
- Mugu RockThat dramatic rock on the ocean side of Pacific Coast Highway, the one from a hundred car commercials, is Mugu Rock…
- Ojai & Bart's BooksA valley town under the Topatopa Mountains lights up pink at sunset, and its bookstore is a hundred and thirty thousand…
- Piedra BlancaRound a bend in the Sespe backcountry above Ojai and a cluster of enormous pale sandstone domes rises out of the…
- Rincon PointThe most famous wave in California peels for hundreds of yards around a point on the Santa Barbara-Ventura line, and on…
- Rose Valley FallsA three-hundred-foot waterfall drops in two tiers over mossy rock at the end of a short, easy trail in the mountains…
- Sespe Wilderness & the Condor SanctuaryThe largest flying land bird in North America came back from twenty-two individuals, and this wild river canyon…
Humboldt8 places
- Avenue of the GiantsThe old highway was left in place when the freeway bypassed it — 31 miles of two-lane road threading through the…
- Fern Canyon & Gold Bluffs BeachA creek runs down a canyon whose walls stand fifty feet high and solid green with ferns, some from plant families older…
- The Lost Coast (King Range)The mountains here rise 4,000 feet straight out of the surf in under three miles — so steep and unstable that highway…
- TrinidadA fishing village of fewer than four hundred people sits over a rock-studded harbor on the far north coast, with ten…
- Arcata Marsh & Wildlife SanctuaryThe city of Arcata treats its sewage by running it through a marsh, and that marsh is now one of the best places to…
- Ferndale & the Kinetic RaceA whole town of ornate Victorian "butterfat palaces" survives on the Humboldt coast, and every spring it's where a…
- Sue-meg State ParkThe first California park to get its name back: Sue-meg, as the Yurok have always called this headland, with a living…
- The Samoa CookhouseThe last lumber-camp cookhouse in the West still feeds you the way it fed loggers in 1893: family-style at long tables…
The Midwest & Great Lakes8 places
- The Boundary WatersOver a thousand lakes stitched together by portage trails across a million acres of forest on the Canadian border…
- The City MuseumA ten-storey former shoe factory that a sculptor spent years turning into a climbable structure — caves of rebar and…
- Cahokia MoundsTwenty minutes from the Gateway Arch stands the largest earthwork in the Americas, at the centre of what was, around AD…
- Forest ParkA city park about five hundred acres larger than Central Park, containing a zoo, an art museum, a science centre and a…
- The Current River & Jacks ForkTwo spring-fed rivers running clear and cold through the Missouri Ozarks, fed by some of the largest springs on the…
- Castlewood & Lone ElkTwenty-five minutes from the Arch: a bluff trail with the Meramec River bending below it, and next door a park where…
- Missouri Cave CountryMissouri has over 7,500 recorded caves — the second-most of any state — and the best-known of them sits on Route 66…
- The Gateway ArchA 630-foot stainless steel catenary curve on the Mississippi, the tallest arch in the world — and you get to the top in…
Point Reyes7 places
- Alamere FallsA waterfall that pours off a cliff straight onto the sand, at the end of a long, unmarked, slightly dangerous hike…
- Tomales Bay OystersShuck your own oysters at a picnic table on the edge of a quiet bay, or paddle it on a dark night when the water glows…
- Tomales Point & the Tule Elk ReserveElk on the tip of a peninsula, ocean on one side and Tomales Bay on the other, and usually no one else on the trail.
- Cypress Tree Tunnel & KPH RadioA quarter-mile corridor of Monterey cypress, planted around 1930, leads to a white Art Deco radio station that took…
- Point Reyes Lighthouse & Chimney RockThe windiest, foggiest point on the West Coast: 308 steps down to a lighthouse on the cliff, and in winter a beach…
- The Inverness Shipwreck (SS Point Reyes)A wooden fishing boat that beached itself on the Tomales Bay mudflats decades ago and never left — listing in the…
- Tomales Bay Bioluminescence PaddleOn moonless summer and fall nights, Tomales Bay glows — every paddle stroke ignites blue-green fire, fish trail comet…
Shasta7 places
- Lava Beds National MonumentA volcanic tableland in California's far northeast is riddled with more than 700 lava-tube caves you explore by…
- McCloud Falls & Castle CragsThree waterfalls stacked along two miles of one river under Mount Shasta — the middle one a fifty-foot curtain into a…
- Mount ShastaA 14,179-foot glaciered volcano stands alone above the far-north forests, visible for a hundred miles — sacred to the…
- McArthur-Burney FallsA 129-foot waterfall that doesn't come from the creek above it — most of the water bursts straight out of the rock face…
- Old Shasta (Shasta State Historic Park)A half-mile of roofless brick storefronts with iron doors is nearly all that's left of the town that was once the…
- Sundial BridgeA white spar leans over the Sacramento River in Redding, holding up a glass-decked footbridge that is also a working…
- Weaverville Joss HouseIn a gold-rush town four hours north, the oldest continuously used Chinese temple in California still burns incense at…
Tahoe7 places
- Desolation WildernessWest of Tahoe the forest gives out and the land turns to bare white granite holding more than a hundred alpine lakes.
- Emerald Bay via the Rubicon TrailTahoe's postcard — a green-glass bay with a stone Scandinavian castle and the lake's only island — earns its fame; the…
- Angora LakesUp a one-lane road above Fallen Leaf Lake, two small lakes sit in a granite bowl, and the resort at the top has been…
- Donner Memorial State ParkA stone monument stands with its pedestal exactly twenty-two feet tall, the depth of the snow that trapped the Donner…
- Fallen Leaf LakeA mile from the South Lake Tahoe sprawl hides a glacial lake that's basically Tahoe in miniature — warmer, quieter…
- Tahoe East Shore CovesThe Nevada side's granite-boulder coves are the Caribbean of the Sierra — and between the famous beach and the nude one…
- The Donner Summit Railroad TunnelsYou can walk straight through the abandoned summit tunnel that Chinese laborers cut through Sierra granite by hand for…
Monterey6 places
- Elkhorn SloughTrade the coast drive for a morning and paddle a tidal slough that holds the largest raft of sea otters on the planet.
- Fort Ord National MonumentAn army base where soldiers trained for three wars is now 86 miles of trail across the hills above Monterey Bay.
- Monterey Bay AquariumBuilt inside a defunct sardine cannery on Steinbeck's Cannery Row, this is the aquarium that first grew a living kelp…
- Mission San Antonio de PaduaOf all twenty-one California missions, only this one still stands alone in its original landscape — no town grew around…
- Pacific GroveThe Victorian beach town on the tip of the peninsula that locals quietly rate over Carmel, minus the crowds and the…
- The Lone Cypress & 17-Mile DriveA solitary cypress has clung to a bare granite headland over Carmel Bay for some 250 years — one of the most…
Sonoma Coast6 places
- Bodega Head & the Hole in the HeadA granite headland that rode up the San Andreas Fault from hundreds of miles south — with cliffs among the best…
- Fort RossA wooden Russian fort with an onion-domed chapel on the wild Sonoma coast, the southern edge of the Russian empire in…
- Salt Point State ParkSix thousand acres of Sonoma coast where the sandstone bluffs are eaten into honeycomb lacework, one of California's…
- Bodega (The Birds)The schoolhouse and church from Hitchcock's "The Birds," still standing in a sleepy inland town that looks eerily…
- Goat Rock & the Russian River MouthThe dramatic mouth of the Russian River, where a colony of harbor seals hauls out on the sand between the river and the…
- Sea Ranch ChapelA tiny, wave-shaped chapel on the Sonoma coast that looks like a seashell grew out of the meadow, open to anyone, of…
Yosemite6 places
- Tuolumne Meadows & the Tioga High CountryAn hour past the Valley crowds, Tioga Road climbs into a different park entirely: subalpine meadows at 8,600 feet…
- Yosemite Valley (done right)The most famous seven square miles of granite on Earth — and it still beats the hype, if you refuse to experience it as…
- Clouds RestThe best summit view in Yosemite isn't Half Dome — it's the peak a thousand feet above it, with no cables, no lottery…
- Hetch HetchyYosemite has a twin — a second glacier-carved valley John Muir called a "wonderfully exact counterpart" — and San…
- Horsetail Fall "Firefall"For about two weeks each February, if the water is flowing and the sky is clear, the setting sun turns a thin waterfall…
- Taft Point & Sentinel DomeOne trailhead on Glacier Point Road serves both of Yosemite's best cheap thrills: a guardrail-free ledge hanging 3,000…
High Desert5 places
- Kelso DunesClimb these Mojave dunes, slide back down, and the whole slope answers with a low booming hum you can feel through your…
- Noah Purifoy Desert Art MuseumAn artist spent the last fifteen years of his life turning ten acres of open desert into a walk-through city of…
- Giant RockA seven-story boulder sitting alone in the open Mojave was the site of UFO conventions that drew thousands, and the…
- Mitchell CavernsThe only limestone caves in California's state parks are hidden in a desert mountain range so remote you can get in…
- The IntegratronA man said aliens from Venus gave him the plans for a machine to reverse aging, and he spent eighteen years building it…
Delta4 places
- Cosumnes River PreserveThe last major undammed river off the Sierra ends here in a sprawl of winter wetlands — and every November thousands of…
- Foster's BighornIn a Delta river town, you can eat dinner in a 1931 bar under the mounted heads of some three hundred big-game animals…
- Locke & the DeltaThe only town in America built by Chinese immigrants for Chinese immigrants still stands on a Delta levee — one wooden…
- The Delta Levee Loop (Hwy 160)Highway 160 rides the top of the Sacramento River levees for forty miles — eye-level with boat traffic, above the…
Salton Sea4 places
- Salvation MountainOne man spent thirty years painting a hill in the desert, with half a million gallons of paint, to say as big as he…
- The Salton Sea & Bombay BeachCalifornia's largest lake was an accident, a river breach that flooded the desert in 1905, and its dead resort towns…
- Bombay BeachA 1950s resort town that the dying Salton Sea left to rot has been colonized by artists, so its ruins now hold a car…
- Slab CityOn the concrete slabs of a torn-down WWII base by the Salton Sea, a few hundred people live off the grid year-round in…
Southern Sierra4 places
- General Sherman & the Giant ForestThe largest living thing on Earth by volume is a giant sequoia in the southern Sierra, and it stands in a forest full…
- Kernville & the Kern RiverThe Kern River drops out of the high Sierra in one of the wildest whitewater runs in the country, and the old mining…
- Kings Canyon & Cedar GroveA glacial gorge deeper than the Grand Canyon runs into the southern Sierra, and John Muir thought it beat Yosemite.
- The Rae Lakes LoopA forty-mile loop out of Kings Canyon climbs to a chain of alpine lakes under a spire called the Painted Lady, over a…
Mid Peninsula3 places
- Coyote Point & CuriOdysseyA eucalyptus-covered point jutting into the bay with a beach, a stretch of the Bay Trail, and a little wildlife center…
- Hiller Aviation MuseumA hangar of oddball aircraft at the little San Carlos airport, from a walk-in 747 nose to the flying cars that never…
- The Pez MuseumA little Burlingame storefront holding the world's largest collection of Pez dispensers, plus a museum of toys that got…
North Bay3 places
- BeniciaCalifornia's forgotten third capital keeps its 1852 capitol building intact, a waterfront main street pointed at the…
- Clear Lake & Mount KonoctiThe oldest lake in North America — holding water continuously for something like half a million years — sits two hours…
- Mare IslandThe US Navy's first Pacific shipyard — 142 years of warships, from wooden paddle steamers to nuclear submarines — sits…
The Southwest (Utah, Arizona & New Mexico)3 places
- Moab — Arches & CanyonlandsTwo thousand natural stone arches in one park — more than anywhere else on Earth — and next door a canyon system so…
- The Grand Canyon446 kilometres long, up to 29 wide, and about 1,800 metres deep, with two billion years of rock stacked in its walls —…
- Zion National ParkA canyon cut 800 metres into red and cream Navajo sandstone, narrow enough at its head that you hike the river itself…
Carmel2 places
- Carmel Mission (San Carlos Borromeo)The stone basilica in Carmel was the headquarters of the entire California mission chain — and Junípero Serra, who ran…
- Carmel-by-the-SeaA one-square-mile village of storybook cottages with no street numbers and a white-sand beach at the bottom of the main…
Alaska1 place
- Denali & Interior AlaskaNorth America's highest mountain rising 5,500 metres from a plain that is barely above sea level — the greatest…
Florida1 place
- The EvergladesNot a swamp but a river — 100 km wide and a few centimetres deep, moving so slowly you can't see it, across a limestone…
Hawai'i1 place
- The Nā Pali Coast, KauaʻiTwenty-seven kilometres of coastline where 1,200-metre cliffs drop straight into the Pacific in fluted green pleats —…
Joshua Tree1 place
- Joshua Tree National ParkThe Joshua trees only grow where the Mojave meets the Colorado desert, and this is the park built around that line…
Lassen1 place
- Lassen & Bumpass HellCalifornia has its own Yellowstone and almost nobody goes: a plug-dome volcano that erupted in 1915, with a boiling…
The Mid-Atlantic1 place
- Shenandoah & the Blue Ridge ParkwayA national park shaped like a ribbon — 170 km long and rarely more than a few miles wide — following a ridge with a…
Napa1 place
- The Glory Hole (Lake Berryessa)When Lake Berryessa fills past the brim, the overflow doesn't run over a dam. It vanishes down a 72-foot hole in the…
New England & New York1 place
- New York CityA city of transplants where almost nobody is from, which is exactly why it's easy to arrive alone — and where the…
The Pacific Northwest1 place
- Olympic National ParkThree parks in one: a temperate rainforest that receives up to four metres of rain a year and grows moss in curtains, a…
Pinnacles1 place
- Pinnacles National ParkThe Bay Area's own national park is the one nobody visits: half of an ancient volcano that drifted 195 miles up the San…
The Rockies (Colorado, Wyoming & Montana)1 place
- Yellowstone & Grand TetonThe world's first national park sits on top of an active supervolcano, which is why half of Earth's geysers are here —…
The South1 place
- Great Smoky MountainsThe most visited national park in the United States, by a wide margin, and one of the most biologically diverse…
Texas1 place
- Big Bend & West TexasThe least-visited great national park in the lower 48, where the Rio Grande cuts 460-metre limestone canyons on the…