central coast: part one

haven't been able to post recently as wooly and the family have been gallivanting around. pops got some time off work and we decided to camp the central coast. we decided to head to the salinas valley first-here's our favorite early morning coffee/tea/ gotta go porta john stop before you hit sacramento. this little blue closet has saved us many a time-there's even toilet paper in it.

being that we were headed to steinbeck country we thought it appropriate to listen to this book on tape during the many many hours we'd be traveling in the car. glad i remembered to check it out of the library.

there was something wrong with our tape player- it was speeding up the tape so that it sounded like we were being read to by david sedaris with touch of munchkin. trippy! it took a while to get used to but we we eventually got used to the helium induced voices. Come to think of it i think David should get a gig reading the classics for audio books. can't you just hear him reading jane austin or dickens! maybe i need to contact him.

we saw so much of california's agricultural land-it went perfect with the book.

we made it all the way to salinas and thought it appropriate to have a picnic at the public library. the truth of the matter: everyone was hungry and cranky and we couldn't find a place to eat our packed lunch after blindly driving around town we stumbled upon the library.

the lunch was eaten heartily and we didn't even mind the wet sprinkler grass:

i needed to check out the library-WOW! it was swarming with patrons-this town loved it's library-awesome! i checked out the steinbeck section. Impressive.

both sides! i found my favorite steinbeck-

cannery row-i know how original. but it is. i just love that book. must admit i'm a bit smitten with ed ricketts who is portrayed as "doc" in the book. He's a fascinating person and i would have loved hanging out with him in his lab. i started reading "the log from the sea of cortez" and there is an excellent bit called" about ed ricketts" by steinbeck in the beginning. something he wrote after ed's horrible accident which killed him in 1948.

i could have stayed there all day. but we had other things on the agenda. next stop:

wonderful place for any steinbeck lover. i took tons of pics inside but i don't want to be the annoying person showing you 50 million pictures from their vacation that you really don't want to see...i can hear the yawns starting already! plus-if you've never been, i'd hate to spoil it for you. i did think the publishing penguin time-line was cool. back into the car; the journey continued......