My guide on where to go for spooky,not scary, Halloween in Los Angeles. I love Halloween, but I'm not a guts and gore kind of gal. Fake haunted houses aren't for me, but I found a few really unusual experiences to check out before Halloween arrives.

Along one of the turns, we saw a crashed van pulling a boat on the side of the road where yellow caution tape was up. We all had our theories about what possibly could have happened. Did the van get too close to the edge? Did foul play happen because it looked like gunshots in the windows? We’ll never know. We pulled over by the lake for a picnic lunch and enjoyed the serene views. When we got to the dam, we stopped and marveled at the history of all that this land holds and tried to imagine riding this trail via stagecoach. It was an adventure even by car.

It's a seemingly cliche question: would you travel to a place or to a...