After serving in World War II and picking up Apollo astronauts, this aircraft carrier has been turned into a museum overlooking the San Francisco Bay.

A decommissioned Naval base now rents itself out for people who want to blow stuff up.

A man-made island in scenic San Francisco Bay.

A shop full of natural curiosities, carnivorous plants, and costumed taxidermied mice.

An vast warehouse of everyday treasures in Berkeley, CA.

Oakland's beautiful monumental cemetery.

A porcelain company's former dumping ground, completely covered in pieces of collectible ceramics.

An "anarchical" no man's land, complete with garbage sculptures and a hobo-run "Landfillian Library."

A walk-in working camera obscura produces 360-degree live images of the San Francisco coast.

San Francisco's urban bison herd has persisted in the face of extinction, development, and disease.

Over 315,000 preserved amphibians and reptiles in jars.

Olfactory delights in San Francisco's Botanical Gardens.

Golden Gate Park's historic collection of plants.

Carnivorous plants, medieval aphrodisiacs, and the largest original wood structure glass conservatory in the western hemisphere.

The grand, column-fronted, sculpture-adorned home of the ambitious digital library.

The randomness of this wall of lava lamps helps encrypt up to 10 percent of the internet.

Prone to disastrous fires, the city of San Francisco has the Guardian, a fireboat gifted by residents, to watch over them from the bay.

Staircase winds down the side of Telegraph Hill through gardens, wild parrots flying overhead.

A huge musical instrument played by the ocean.

The last remaining relic of San Francisco's glittering 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition.

There is no trying to fall in love with this Star Wars fountain, you just do or do not.