3 Best Sights in Salinas, The Monterey Bay Area

The center's exhibits document the life of Pulitzer- and Nobel-prize winner John Steinbeck and the history of the nearby communities that inspired novels such as East of Eden. Highlights include reproductions of the green pickup-camper from Travels with Charley and the bunk room from Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck House, the author's Victorian birthplace, is two blocks from the center at 132 Central Avenue. Now a popular (lunch-only) restaurant and gift shop with docent-led tours, it also displays memorabilia.

Exotic animals, many of them retired from film, television, and live production work or rescued from less-than-ideal environments, find sanctuary here. The zoo offers daily tours (1 pm and 3 pm June–August, 1 pm September–May), but for an in-depth experience, stay in a safari bungalow on-site at Vision Quest Safari B&B, where you can join the elephants in their enclosures for breakfast. The inn's room rate includes a complimentary zoo tour.

With the low-slung, colonnaded Mission San Juan Bautista as its drawing card, this park 20 miles northeast of Salinas is about as close to early-19th-century California as you can get. Historic buildings ring the wide green plaza, among them an adobe home furnished with Spanish-colonial antiques, a hotel frozen in the 1860s, a blacksmith shop, a pioneer cabin, and a jailhouse. The mission's cemetery contains the unmarked graves of more than 4,300 Native American converts.  On the first Saturday of the month, costumed volunteers engage in quilting bees, tortilla making, and other frontier activities, and sarsaparilla and other nonalcoholic drinks are served in the saloon.