Weird day trips from San Diego

The strangest San Diego finds are often a short drive out. These 7 day trips — Palomar Observatory, Jacumba Hot Springs Hotel, Mount Laguna Observatory and more — are each hand-vetted and sourced: ghost towns, hot-spring soaks, roadside oddities, and odd small-town museums worth the gas. A weird day trip is its own kind of date.

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Palomar Observatory The 200-inch Hale Telescope inside this Caltech-run dome was the largest in the world from 1949 to 1975, and… Palomar Mountain
Jacumba Hot Springs Hotel A revived 1950s motor lodge sitting almost on top of the US-Mexico border line, built around three geothermal… Jacumba Hot Springs (US-Mexico border)
Mount Laguna Observatory San Diego State University's research observatory sits at 6,100 feet in the Laguna Mountains, 45 miles east o… Mount Laguna / Cleveland National Forest
California Surf Museum A permanent surfboard timeline running from waterlogged early-1900s wooden planks to modern shortboards, cent… Downtown Oceanside
Miniature Engineering Craftsmanship Museum A free museum built around one obsession — machines and engines shrunk to working scale — anchored by a 1/6-s… Carlsbad
Palomar College Planetarium A full research-grade fulldome theater built into the middle of a community college campus — Friday-night pub… San Marcos
Deer Park Winery & Auto Museum Three barns holding over 100 vintage American cars sit above a working vineyard, including a recreated 1950s… Escondido