Great post and thanks for the story about Steinbeck, P_7878! I remember that we two had a discussion about him a few years back already in one of your posts. If I had to choose just one of his many books, it would definitely be "Travels with Charley: In search of America". By the way, and I hope I remember this correctly, when he arrived in Monterey on this trip, he was so upset seeing these huge crowds of tourists (and this was in 1960 🙂), that he almost "fled" through the Mojave Desert and Arizona and only stopped, once he had arrived in Texas. 😃