Monterey is a little over an hour by car and well worth the drive, which is itself a pleasure. For those interested in San Jose history, it is impossible not to get excited about several of our nearby cities that are as wound up in the history of California.
Monterey is one of those important cities in our California history. Like San Jose, this is a city that one could spend a lifetime visiting, learning about, and photographing with great satisfaction.
Pictured above is Colton Hall in the Friendly Plaza. In this building the California Constitution was written in 1849. It stated that San Jose would be the state capitol, was written in English and Spanish as a bilingual constitution, and led to California becaming the 31st state in 1850.
500 seeds comprising four species of trees were sent in orbit around the moon with Apollo 14 in 1971. When they returned, some of what became known as Moon Trees were planted alongside similar trees for research, some were given to states or countries as gifts. In 1976, many were given to cities and states with appropriate climates for the various tree seedlings in order to celebrate the bicentennial of the USA. The Moon Tree pictured above is one of these 1976 trees. In the bay area, the nearest two Moon Trees are in Monterey and in Berkeley. For comparison of two very different earth species, the human species woman visiting the Monterey Moon Tree in the photo above was born in 1976 when the Coast Redwood species Moon Tree next to her was planted.
One interesting thing about bronze statues is that you can always tell where people are drawn to touch them most by the clearing of any natural tarnishing. For this bear, it is clearly the teeth that people are drawn to touch. It took my youngest child all of seconds before placing a foot in the bear’s teeth and asking me to take a picture.
Across the street from the Friendly Plaza is the Montery Museum of Art. Below are a few of the treasures located there.
Monterey and Monterey Bay are incredible locations for discovery. The factors that brought people here for thousands of years continue to influence the lives of the people and continue to draw me to learn and discover more with great appreciation.