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Day 3: June 20, 2018
We left San Francisco on Day 3 and started our drive south toward Los Angeles. We took a look at the Pacific Ocean on our way down to California's first capital, the beautiful seaside town of Monterey. Of course, we visited the phenomenal Monterey Bay Aquarium, one of the finest in the world. We saw dozens of exhibits, everything from octopus to sharks, schools of fish and fish that didn't look like fish, sea otters, penguins, lots of different kinds of sea birds, and other creatures besides. Every exhibit is beautifully designed to replicate the creatures' habitats in the wild as much a possible. The pictures are just a small sample of all the fascinating wildlife of the sea. Outside the aquarium, we wandered down Cannery Row, the section of Monterey that used to be sardine canneries that have now been turned into shops and restaurants. This is the area made famous by John Steinbeck (who lived and worked in Salinas and Monterey) in his book "Cannery Row." We traveled further south through the farmland of the "Salad Bowl of the World," the Salinas Valley, which grows much of our lettuce, and many other crops, including grapes for wine, strawberries, artichokes, etc. We had dinner at Old Saint Luis BBQ, which was a delicious cap to our day. We took a little time to walk around the college town of San Luis Obispo to work off the dinner and headed to our hotel in Grover Beach.