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.All Trips / California / North America / Southwestern USA
“Pic of the Week”, January 20, 2017: Kelp Forest, Monterey Bay Aquarium
The finest aquarium I’ve had the privilege of visiting is in Monterey, California. Built alongside the old sardine canneries of Cannery Row (a site immortalized in John Steinbeck’s novella of the same name), you’ll find yourself fully immersed in the underwater world when you visit.
There’s dozens of great exhibits, but there are two that are my favorites — the jellyfish, and this one, the Kelp Forest tank. I’ve spent a lot of time watching this latter tank because there seems to be no end as to what’s going on. A giant shape approaches in the tank, only to be broken into thousands of individual sardines as the school splits apart. The moving light and shadows of the kelp, the sharks …
Tagged Aquarium, California, kelp forest, Monterey, Monterey Bay
.All Trips / California / North America / Southwestern USA
John Steinbeck Country: 3) Cannery Row, Monterey, California
“Cannery Row…is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream.”
— John Steinbeck, from his novel ‘Cannery Row’
Wow! With a beautifully written introduction like that, who wouldn’t want to visit this place? Cannery Row is my favorite novel by American author John Steinbeck. It may not be his best book, but it’s the first of his I’d read and the one that made me a fan. Published in 1945, Cannery Row is set in Monterey, California during the Great Depression, near a waterfront street lined by sardine canneries. The book’s setting is secondary to the narrative and the many colorful characters Steinbeck develops. Steinbeck wrote a sequel to Cannery Row, called Sweet Thursday, some 10 years later, a much less interesting novel in my opinion (as …
Tagged Aquarium, California, Cannery Row, John Steinbeck, Monterey, Monterey Bay
.All Trips / California / North America / Southwestern USA
John Steinbeck Country: 1) Salinas. The Steinbeck House
I greatly admire and enjoy the writing of American novelist, John Steinbeck — in fact, you’ll see a quote from one of Steinbeck’s books underneath my blog’s banner. Steinbeck was born and grew up in the small farming town of Salinas, California, in 1902. His formative experiences in and around this community were extremely influential on his life view and future writing, including his Nobel prize winning novel, “The Grapes of Wrath” .
It had been decades since I’d last stopped in Salinas and I knew that a new Steinbeck museum had opened in town which I very much wanted to see. So while doing an (all too short) California road trip with two of my Arthur C. Clarke buddies, electronics engineer …
Tagged California, John Steinbeck, Monterey, Salinas, Steinbeck House
