The Monkey rests by the wharf in Monterey, California and contemplates a few aspects of the region's history. Though the Spanish explored California as early as 1542 and the English navigator Drake reached land just north of what is today San Francisco by 1579, the Spaniards were slow to colonize what they called Alta (Upper) California. In 1770, the Spanish governor of the Californias, Portolá, founded Monterey and a short time later the Franciscans opened a mission there. By 1775, Monterey had become the capital of the Spanish colony of Alta California.

With Mexican independence from Spain in 1821, Alta California became an extension of the Mexican state. Owing to its jittery internal politics in its early days, Mexico was unable to prevent the United States from taking over California during the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846-1848. The 1848 Treaty of Guadeloupe-Hidalgo formalized the handover of California and other Mexican lands (including modern Nevada and Utah and parts of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming) to the United States, greatly increasing the latter's size and diminishing significantly the size of Mexico. With the Gold Rush of 1849, San Francisco rapidly eclipsed Monterey as California's most important city.

Today, Monterey is a popular tourist destination and something of an artist's community. In 1967, its Monterey Pop Festival featured such legends as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Otis Redding, among others.

The Monkey thought this statue of author John Steinbeck, on the Monterey street he made famous in his novel Cannery Row, was an appropriate place to introduce the special role California has played in the popular psyche. At the western extremities of the U.S. mainland, California has been populated by waves of people fleeing hard times further east. It's all quite recent history, beginning in large numbers with the discovery of gold in California hills in 1849, which set off a frenzy of moves to the region of people who thought that trying to pick-axe and pan their way to wealth couldn't be any worse than life where they came from.

Then there was the 1930s Great Depression, with droughts, farm foreclosures, and famine pushing countless families along the old Route 66 to the "promised land" of California. This episode Steinbeck described wonderfully in his novel, The Grapes of Wrath. As the novel makes clear, California wasn't all it was said to be. But to this day, people seeking a "big change" still think California, and aside from U.S. nationals transplanting to California, it's also a major magnet for immigrants from places as near and far away as Mexico, Central America, Eastern Europe, and the Pacific Rim. Each successive wave of newcomers makes California's hybrid culture all the more colorful and world-cognizant—an advantage for the state that Californians need to recall when reactionary, insular politics rear their ugly head.

Another place John Steinbeck helped to popularize was the Big Sur, a natural wonderland along the Pacific coast about 230 kilometers south of San Francisco. Here, the Monkey looks down from a cliff onto the beach at Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. Though you can barely make it out in this shot due to the shadows, a unique feature of this park is a waterfall (slightly to the right above the Monkey) that falls from the clifftop onto the beach below, then runs into the ocean.

The Monkey has many more shots from the wonderful Californian coastline on the following pages.

California is also renowned for its beaches (as if the Monkey had to tell you that). Surfing, suntanning, and swimming are all popular activities (for some even lifestyles) along the sandy shores of California. But a lot of that is confined to the southern sections of the state (see note on Southern California below). In the northern half of the state, the water is decidedly chilly, so surfers wear wetsuits, and swimmers steer clear because the beaches often have dangerous riptides and undertows. That doesn't stop them being beautiful, like this beach at Carmel, on the Monterey peninsula. The town is famous for its wealth, characterized by the Pebble Beach golf course visible in the distance, and the fact that longterm resident Clint "Go Ahead, Make My Day" Eastwood was once elected mayor here.

A note about the Monkey's travels in Southern California. In 1995 the Monkey traveled across the length of Old Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles (well, the Monkey veered off course a bit and ended up in San Diego, further south). So, where are the pictures from that mini-odyssey, you might be wondering? Good question. The Monkey paused a few times along the way for photos, such as at the Grand Canyon, but for the most part, this was early on in the history of Monkey Travel, and he wasn't yet persistent about being photographed. When he did get pictures, they were inane, like this one in Long Beach, California. The Monkey has become much more vociferous about his travel photography since that trip, and he guarantees that the next time he makes it out to Southern California there will be better images to share. Still, his SoCal sunbasking seen here isn't far off course...

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