SAN GABRIEL MOUNTAINS, California — When I first read about the Bridge to Nowhere — an isolated concrete bridge perched over the San Gabriel River leading neither from nor to any destination — the idea of it caught my imagination. Just the name made the Bridge seem cosmically significant, as though simply walking over it might take a person away from his life and problems. At least, finding the Bridge seemed like it might be an adventure.

Hikers walk past the sign indicating the trail to the Bridge to Nowhere.

Hikers walk through the Sheep Mountain Wilderness.

A Bungee America representative explains the art of bungee jumping.

A bungee jumper sails toward the San Gabriel River from the Bridge to Nowhere.

A bungee jumper flips off the Bridge to Nowhere.

Construction workers built the Bridge as part of a planned road through the San Gabriel Mountains, but after a flood destroyed the road in 1938, the project was abandoned, and the Bridge sat useless in the wilderness. To find it, my friends and I hiked five miles into the Angeles National Forest this past weekend, following the East Fork of the San Gabriel River. The hike required us to cross the River many times, giving us wet, squishy socks, and we battled Our Lord's Candle, a razor-sharp flowering yucca plant. After about two and a half hours, we found the Bridge, nestled deep in a mountain canyon.

But when we walked onto the Bridge, I looked down at the rushing river below, and I didn't feel anything special. The Bridge, a mass of concrete and rebar in the middle of the wilderness, just sat like a lonely orphan, without providing us any earth-shattering revelations about ourselves.

We rested under the unforgiving desert sun, eating sandwiches on the Bridge, waiting for the lightning of inspiration to strike us. Then, suddenly, we heard voices, and saw in the distance a mass of high school and college students bounding toward us. Bubbling with excitement, they had hiked to the Bridge to Nowhere for one reason: to jump off of it. Bungee America, the oldest operating bungee jumping company in the US, had guided them to the Bridge. Maybe the Bridge only reveals its cosmic significance if you jump from it, I thought.

My friend Suzanne and I had previously skipped right to skydiving together without ever graduating from bungee jumping, so we were excited to try it for the first time. We weighed in and listened attentively as the Bungee America experts explained the five types of jumps we were allowed to try: the forward swan dive, backward plunge, flip, elevator drop (in which the Bridge simply slips out from under you and you fall), and ankle harness jump. Each sounded more terrifying than the previous, but the professionals soothingly stressed their perfect 20-year safety record, and we were quickly convinced.

After our safety briefing, Bungee America divided us into weight groups. Like an emergency evacuation of the Titanic, the tiny size-zero teenage girls were to jump first and the hulking gym-rat guys were to jump last. Our hosts attached the bungee cord to the first jumper, a 110-pound bikini-clad blonde girl named Lara who didn't seem even slightly nervous, and she climbed over the Bridge's railing. About fifty people gathered at the Bridge's edge to watch her dive from the Bridge to Nowhere, and the crowd's excitement was palpable. In unison, the crowd counted down loudly from five. Then, she dove into the void.

From the Bridge above, we heard the echoes in the canyon of her screams as we watched her bounce on the bungee cord. Then, to the sound of clapping and cheering, our hosts hoisted her back onto the Bridge. With crimson cheeks and a big smile on her face, she looked blissful. Someone asked her how she liked her jump, and bubbling over with excitement, she gushed, "Again! Again!"

And so, I watched Lara, Suzanne, and almost fifty other jumpers dive off the Bridge over four hours, one after another. Almost every time, the crowd helped count down to the dive and cheered when the jumper returned to the Bridge alive. When someone standing on the edge appeared nervous, the crowd helped them overcome their fear by cheering even more wildly until they eventually jumped. The people in the crowd mostly didn't know each other, but the Bridge to Nowhere seemed to connect them.

Then, it was my turn to jump. After climbing over the railing and perching myself on the tiny platform on the Bridge's edge, I peered nervously at the rushing water and jagged rocks of the San Gabriel River far below me. It looked like a long way down.

But then I heard the crowd chanting and my friends yelling at me from the canyon below.

"Sounds like you have a cheering section," the guy from Bungee America said as he bounced up and down, motioning for me to dive.

"Go big or go home!" a spectator yelled good-naturedly.

I stretched out my arms, looked down at the river below, and dove off the Bridge to Nowhere, into the void. The roaring river and rocks below flew toward me. Adrenaline rushed through my body.

Then, the bungee cord stopped my fall. My cheeks turned crimson. I looked up at the energetic group of strangers on the bridge. I smiled big.

Suzy flies a kite in front of the Korean Bell of Friendship.

SAN PEDRO, California — In the famous finale to the musical Disney film Mary Poppins, a transformed George Banks (David Tomlinson) discovers the importance of his family after the humorless Mr. Dawes fires him from his job at a London bank for inadvertently causing a bank run. To the astonishment of his children and household staff, he sings and dances to the movie's final musical number wearing his trademark black bowler hat, with the help of a rousing background choir: "With tuppence for paper and strings/You can have your own set of wings/With your feet on the ground/You're a bird in flight/With your fist holding tight/To the string of your kite!/Let's go fly a kite/Up to the highest height!"

Of course, the family passes chimney sweep Bert (Dick Van Dyke) conveniently selling kites in the nearby park (that guy really knows how to... (more)

Pacific Coast Highway snakes through a Redwood forest in northern California.

VENICE, California — On a rainy day in 2002, my then-girlfriend and I left Gold Beach and continued our Pacific Coast Highway road trip by driving up the Oregon coast slowly, stopping to enjoy the ocean views and experience local flavor in each tiny coastal town. When we drove through Oregon's long stretch of sand dunes, we stopped to photograph ourselves in front of the dunes. From dark Pacific Northwest clouds, rain poured down, soaking our hair, but it only invigorated us as we moved closer to Seattle, excited to live together for the first time.

Meanwhile, on an equally gray morning in 2006, after having sped through Redwood National Park at dusk the evening before, my brother Brian, his girlfriend Beatrice, my friend Brad, and I continued toward my new life in Los Angeles. Under a gloomy sky, we drove over a Golden Gate... (more)

A traveler pilots a Yamaha Rhino across a sand dune in southern Oregon.

GOLD BEACH, Oregon — After Erin and I left Seattle for our Pacific Coast Highway road trip last week, we sped quickly to the Oregon coast, enjoying ocean views and the enormous 500-foot sand dunes that make up the largest expanse of coastal sand dunes in North America. For some reason, road trips always inspire me to crave tasty pie, so we stopped for tart blueberry-rhubarb pie and ice cream at The Historic Wells Creek Inn in Scottsburg. For lunch, we learned the importance of eating Hawaiian BBQ only in its native land after a taste of the almost inedible food at Springfield's Kona Café Hawaiiian BBQ. After filling our stomachs, we drove on to Spinreel, a dune buggy rental company that we had seen advertised at the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area Information Center. After an excruciatingly long safety video and... (more)

Crater Lake, in the Cascade Mountains in Southern Oregon, lies in a collapsed volcanic basin.

SEATTLE, Washington — Seven years ago, in 2002, my then-girlfriend and I decided it was time for us to live together in my Seattle apartment, and we took a Pacific Coast Highway road trip to move her lipstick red Saab from San Diego to Seattle.

Four years later, in 2006, I decided to leave my career in Seattle, and I asked my brother Brian, his girlfriend Beatrice, and my best friend Brad to join me on a road trip in my silver BMW to Los Angeles on Pacific Coast Highway.

Three years later, in 2009 (last week), my friend Erin decided to leave her job in Seattle, and I agreed to help her drive her purple Toyota on PCH to her new life in Southern California.

Pacific Coast Highway — actually a combination of US Route 101, California's Highway 1, and Mexico Route 1 — takes travelers on a dramatic journey from the top of... (more)

Hikers Suzanne, Wendy, and Rich look toward Area 51 from nearby Tikaboo Peak.

RACHEL, Nevada — On the first day of our trip to Area 51, we had come close to seeing the base, but not close enough. The buildings comprising the mysterious military installation sit in Groom Lake, a dry lakebed obscured from view by mountains on all sides. Almost 15 years ago, it was possible to hike up one of two mountains, Freedom Ridge or White Sides, to see Area 51 from only 12 miles away, but in 1995, the military seized the peaks to prevent people from photographing the base. Nevertheless, we had read that a mountain 26 miles from the base, Tikaboo Peak, was still accessible. Knowing that climbing Tikaboo would be our only chance to see Area 51's secrets, we started a 25-mile drive on yet another dirt road into the desert. The directions to the peak made us a little nervous, reminding us that a 25-mile hike back to the... (more)

A sign warns trespassers at the boundary of Area 51 as security officers in a truck keep watch from a ridge.

RACHEL, Nevada — On September 10, 1993, the television landscape changed forever with the premiere of "The X-Files," a television show about two FBI agents investigating all things paranormal, including UFOs, aliens, and even spirituality. David Duchovny played agent Fox Mulder, a quirky, wry G-Man with an obsession with the unexplained reinforced by an "I Want To Believe" poster in his office, and Gillian Anderson played agent Dana Scully, Mulder's partner and a self-professed skeptic, originally assigned to keep Mulder in check. With 202 episodes over nine years, 16 Emmys, and numerous appearances on best-television-show lists, "The X-Files" helped to inspire the format and style of many newer television shows, including "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Alias," "Lost," "The 4400," "Bones," and "Fringe."

In the show's second episode,... (more)

A view of Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts, where Henry David Thoreau wrote his most famous work

HANOVER, New Hampshire and CONCORD, Massachusetts — I am probably the only person in the world stupid enough to have had an oral surgeon remove my wisdom teeth five days before going to his five-year college reunion. I had been putting off this rite of passage for years because of the infamous "Wisdom Teeth Choice." Oral surgeons let patients choose whether they want to be put asleep completely during surgery or kept awake with pain numbed by local anesthesia. I was sure I wanted neither. The only thing I could imagine scarier than having an hour of my life erased from my memory — e-mail-based urban legends have made me protective of my kidneys — was being fully awake as a surgeon ripped out my teeth. More importantly, wisdom teeth removal would be my last major tooth-related life milestone before dentures. The surgery seemed... (more)

New Hampshire's Cornish-Windsor Bridge, the longest two-span wooden covered bridge in the world.

HANOVER, New Hampshire — My friend Suzanne and I were driving through the pastoral countryside of rural New England on a deserted highway when we passed a serial killer at 70 miles per hour, leering at us from a truck. Or at least, Suzanne thought he was a serial killer.

"I just saw the scary guy from Deliverance leering at me from that truck cab!" Suzanne exclaimed. Trying to keep my eyes on the road, I didn't see him, and I'm always skeptical of Suzanne's ability to understand the world of flirting. I curtly shot back, "I'm sure he wasn't leering at you. You really don't understand the interaction between the sexes."

But before Suzanne had time to convince me otherwise, the truck driver passed our passenger window again, and this time, I got a good look at him. I gasped. The terrifying sight of this truck driver peering at... (more)

A sign welcomes tourists to Alcatraz off the coast of San Francisco, Calif.

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. — Anyone who knows me knows that I get cranky when I'm hungry. I stop talking and shift into a comatose state, walking down the street like a soulless ghost until I find a café selling smoothies or panini. This past December, I sat comatose on a flight to San Francisco after rushing from work without eating lunch.

A girl I had been dating had asked me to visit her in northern California before I flew to Patagonia, and against my better judgment, I agreed to pack early and spend my originally scheduled packing-day on a whirlwind, 24-hour Bay Area tour. I admit that the excitement of hearing Orbitz's automated computer read details of a 12-flight itinerary to me over the phone distracted me from analyzing whether my plan actually made sense.

Starving, I landed in San Francisco and texted her — no one... (more)