Highway 395 Road Trip

A "living ghost town" may be an oxymoron, but the historic gold-mining town of Randsburg (pop. 200) should meet enough criteria to satisfy ghost town buffs. You've got a selection of abandoned buildings from...

Toothy, menacing fish heads surfacing from the dry desert landscape. What's not to love? Still, these rocks have divided locals since the '30s, starting a war that would see the fish heads painted, embellish...

If you've ever played with Magic Rocks, you'll get an idea of what tufa towers look like on a much smaller scal. SoCal's Trona Pinnacles are a good example of these natural wonders. The pinnacles' otherworl...

Male fiberglass giants clearly outnumber those of the female persuasion. What gives? We're sure this gargantuan gal in Pearsonville, CA (a.k.a. the hubcap capital of the world) can attract as much attention ...

If you're reading this in the middle of the summer season, you might want to hold off visiting until December or January when temperatures will cool considerably. A seemingly bleak landscape is a treasure tr...

Sometimes, junk art looks just like...junk. Unless you head to the barren landscape of the Mojave desert and find this treasure trove of remade junk. Made with a lot of loving care, this race of metal creatu...

We haven't got a clue as to what purpose this kooky yellowish/orange hut serves, but we like the looks of it all the same.

These odd mounds are part of the Gold Rush history. They were used to provide charcoal for the Cerro Gordo mine. Partially eroded, these giant kilns are just shells. Driving on Highway 365, you will see sign...

A museum that will make you want to shout, "Hi-yo, Silver!" has memorabilia and history of "The Lone Ranger" and other iconic westerns from the early 1900s displayed in 40 exhibits. Housed in an old movie th...

This trail loop is located in a desolate but beautiful area in the Alabama Hills of California. It was also one of the filming locations for the Tarantino film "Django Unchained." The centerpiece of this hik...

These rugged rock formations make up part of the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada. This spot was also the film location of Westerns such as "The Lone Ranger" and "Bonanza." Amazingly, around 150 movies and...

A giant boulder in California has great bone structure so it has become a tradition for artists (or aspiring artists) to paint facial features on it. Some are scary, but many are just cute or silly. To get t...

The beauty of this national park belies its sad past. During WWII, the American government ordered over 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry to be moved and held in military camps. The Manzanar camp incarcera...

Update: The Roosevelt Tree in Big Pine, CA was sadly cut down on September 28, 2020. The tree lost its water source, a roadside creek, in the 2017-18 drought. The Big Pine Civic Club tried everything they co...

This Mammoth Lakes hot spring looks very inviting with its neon blue pools of steaming water. But beware! The springs stay at a deadly boiling temperature. 14 deaths have occurred at these springs before the...

The geological formations at Devils Postpile National Monument are stunning examples of columnar basalt which are 60-foot high towers arranged in incredible symmetry. The 101-foot, single drop Rainbow Falls ...

This national monument's crowning feature is the geological formation of the same name made of columnar basalt. The unusual and alien striations were caused by the rapid cooling of lava around 100,000 years ...

Mono Lake is quite possibly the largest natural sea-monkey aquarium in existence. This wide but shallow saline soda lake formed probably 760,000 years ago and now is a living ecosystem based on the brine shr...

Even California, where real estate is at a premium, has her ghost towns. Far inland and near the CA-NV border, the ghost town of Bodie rests in peace, a casualty of the 1800s search for gold. The original st...