🇺🇸 Salinas, CA - Steinbeck Country - 07.29.2026

I made a trip South from San Francisco to Monterey Bay for a farm stay… I was to care for a handful of goats, sheep, chickens, dogs, cats, plants… farm things… but one of the family members became ill at the last moment so they canceled their vacation… and I then found myself without obligation and parked in a town called Salinas, CA.

I’ve been through Salinas a few times. It is, in my discoveries, my definition… the beginning of what Northern California is. And Southern, it begins around Morrow Bay… Big Sur is in between, and it’s its own animal and has generally been cut off from the LA side because of perpetual mudslides blocking CA Highway 1 (which has very recently opened again).

I was in the Morro Bay Area about 3 years ago… it was my first time in the region… and I was pondering the thought of where the dividing line is between Northern and Southern California. I was walking to Pismo Beach in the evening… and as I was crossing the street, a truck rumbled by, and the driver burst his head out the window and screamed, “Giants Suck!!!” He had a voice like a little girl and it made me laugh… and in my mind I replied, “the Giants do suck—it’s just a SF hat…” and yup… this is the LA side, and where Southern CA begins.

Salinas Valley is an agricultural region known as the “Salad Bowl of the World” for producing a large percentage of U.S. vegetables. And what sparks my defining point as “Northern,” is the climate… It’s cool and breezy. Despite Salinas being 12 miles inland, it receives cool air from the Pacific through a natural thermal engine pulled in by the hot inland Valley. And past that, you don’t have to go far east or south… before it gets blistering hot.

The first time I came to California was in 1988 for a motorcycle race at Laguna Seca which is between Salinas and Monterey. It was the first Gran Prix motorcycle race held in the U.S. in 30 years. Three of us drove out from Denver in a 70s-something Toyota Corolla… we drove straight through… 22 hours… only gas and snack stops… thanks to chemically infused alertness (true story). I was just out of my teens… and the 2 other dudes were from the previous generation and a dozen years older than myself, and also motorcycle nuts.

We stayed in Soledad, about 30 minutes South of Salinas because it was budget… it seemed a little sketch… and was definitely back country… but we didn’t spend much time there… only beers and burgers and sleeps. If I remember correctly… actually… I don’t remember eating anything (the chemicals). Which also got us home in a single shot… another 22 hours of solid driving. The 2 older guys had switched off driving duties (there and back) the entire way while I sat in the back seat of the Corolla. It wasn’t exactly cozy. They never gave me a turn at the wheel… and I could only figure it was because I wasn’t a trusted adult, or they wanted to jabber to each other in the front seats, or be controlling pricks… I really didn’t care (the chemicals)… but when we made it home they made sure to give me shit that ‘THEY’ did ‘All’ of the driving and I didn’t do anything. Ummm… fuck you guys!!! You never gave me the chance… or said one single word at the time. I was already quite familiar with being harassed (especially in my own home by my father) about what I did, or didn’t do, or was supposed to well after the fact. Bullying, mocking, ego-boosting/image stroking is a prevalent method of communication and expression with the blue-collar demographic… and in American politics.

Steve was one of the older dudes… I found out recently that he passed. I admired him at the time. The first occasion we had met was at his house… he was building a motorcycle in the living room. I asked to use the bathroom. His bathtub was full of motorcycle parts… I alerted him to the obvious… and he said, “Yeah… I use the shower at my mom’s next door… I thought that was the coolest… I wanted that… I wanted to have that story. Later in my life… I had a few vintage Italian motorcycles displayed in my house… but my bath was fully functional. I’ve never been married. Take that how you like.

•

One notable attribute about Salinas, CA is that John Steinbeck was born and raised there. A lifelong muse; it was inspiration and settings for “East of Eden” and “Of Mice and Men” and other works. He had a love-hate relationship but wrote fondly of it… and was returned in death… his ashes are interred in the family plot.

I patrolled for 3 days… mostly around downtown… and the Northside commercial area. It’s peaceful, super clean, affordable by California standards. It’s 20 minutes to the coast, 2 hours from SF, and striking distance to Big Sur and Los Angeles.

I generally stay in the artsy neighborhoods or the downtown area when I roll into a new town. Sometimes they are one and the same. I booked a cheap hotel 2 blocks off of Main Street and near downtown. No graffiti, no stickers, no litter, all is groomed and tidy. Totally PG-13.

I walked downtown for dinner one evening… sleepy, peaceful vibration, safe, spotless… I came across one junkie/zombie… and a group of teenagers playing grab-ass. Mild at best. I had seen an IG reel of a homeboy giving his top 5 most sketch cities in California. I have been through all of those places… and Salinas was on the list. I just didn’t see it… I came across only a handful of shelterless folks… and 2 blocks off of Main, as I walked to the Steinbeck Museum, there were a couple of sketch vans… and what appeared to be drug activity happening through covered windows… but that’s it. Perhaps there’s a depressed corner somewhere. But that’s in any city—Every City, U.S.A.

So… I didn’t see the sketchiness, or feel it. Maybe we see what we want to see. Maybe my observations are skewed by my own comparisons to other places I know. Or what I think is ‘sketch’ may be different than what sketch means. Would I move to Salinas? No… I’d likely get bored and restless in a few days… but I’d camp out for a spell for budget and location reasons.

I made a visit to the Steinbeck Center which houses the Steinbeck Museum. Entry is $15 bucks… which makes me grimace… mostly because I’m cheap like that. The Center is a lovely building… but the museum is just a small part. And it was overly curated and designed (typical California), much involving focus on Hollywood movies based on Steinbeck’s books. I found it to be… well… overly dressed.

I went… and paid the entry fee for the specific reason to see the camper truck that he had built for a round-trip American adventure in 1960. He named the 1960 GMC 4-wheel drive truck, with custom camper, “Rocinante”—after Don Quixote's famously worn-out, loyal horse. It was behind glass so you couldn’t touch it or sneeze on it, I suppose. My photos turned out blurry… I must of have had a smear of hamburger grease on my lens. Supercool all the same.

“I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found.” - John Steinbeck (Travels with Charley-In Search of America)

The book itself, “Travels with Charley,” resonates with me on many levels… and Steinbeck’s words and ideas on “tumbling thoughts” as his creative processes are immensely inspirational and validating to my own methods of expressing myself artistically. Check it out… at your local library… they have all kinds of good shit there.

“I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation- a burning desire to go, to move, to get underway, anyplace, away from any Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unanchored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every State I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move.”

John Steinbeck

My last stop for the trip was Salinas' Garden of Memories Cemetery. Steinbeck’s resting place. I’d rather read an inspirational word by person… than visit the location of their dusty remains… but I was in the neighborhood, and there is fuck-all to do in town… and I find cemeteries to be comforting and peaceful. I would go to the Riverside Cemetery in Denver during Covid days… quiet strolls through the grounds to ease the nervous system. Zero to a few other upright people… and all others… long-sleeping.

The grave site marker has pencils/pens, coins, pinecones… I guess as a tribute… I don’t know… the human-being is the strangest of all species. I read his works… that’s my tribute I suppose. Oh… and I dropped a toothpick that wore out its use on the ground in the cemetery… I leave them all of planet earth. You know, as a tribute…

* Just before his death in New York, John Steinbeck told his third wife, Elaine, that “No man should be buried in alien soil.” He wanted his remains brought back to his native California, leading to his burial in Salinas. And so he returned…

That being said, I return to my Colorado homelands in a few short days. My health continues to decline. One manifestation of this mystery condition is malabsorption. I’m not digesting nutrients and my body is not-so-kindly eating itself. I now weigh in at 58 kilos. “Super featherweight” if I were a boxer… and significantly less, and concerning, than the bulky mass I was 6 months ago. My skin hangs off what used to be muscle. My clothes drape loose off my body… my belt is over taxed to keep my pants up… and in a celebration of ‘humor and humility’ I find myself shopping for suspenders to hold up my underwear. I walk around the streets of windy San Francisco getting blown around like a ragdoll… I want to go by the bank to get two bags of nickels to put in my pockets so I’m not hurled over the Golden Gate Bridge in a gust. Whoas and problems… we have them, don’t we all…

I’ll be in Denver for a week for medical appointments and tests and such… then back to CA for 2 weeks… I then pack my car with my necessary things… and will drive back to Colorado… and stay… until I have some answers, resolve, or until the snow flies, or I turn to dust… preferably in that order. Let’s sit down for a catch-up… snacks and chats and hugs… all good shit.

“I am happy to report that in the war between reality and romance, reality is not the stronger.”

John Steinbeck