Features of Interest #2: California's The Monterey Bay

So! You're familiar with the famed California of the midnorthern Americas. It's one of the most storied of States! Famous from literature all the way through film and beyond, as a setting for all manner of plots and dramas. Whether you like time-traveling whales, film noir or pick-your-disaster, chances are: California. And right about smack to the center of its left edge, in the "Central Coast" region as it's called, sits a real gem: The Monterey Bay.

Perhaps the first thing you'll notice about The Monterey Bay is, there's a kind of a broad, wide, undulating surface....and then there's a jutting part at both ends, with kind of a broad sweep of a curve in the middle - now this is less the bay itself, by the way, and more the land that encloses it, that surrounds and defines it and gives it its form - but still of great regional interest! With many features to ogle. Oggle. Gawk at.

There are a big couple of smoke stacks in Moss Landing. I forget what that used to be. Maybe it still is! Moss Landing, in any event, is situated right about smack in the middle of the curved part - midway between Santa Cruz and Monterey. A landmark visible clear from the other side of things.

Monterey proper - it's a city, it's situated at the southern edge of its namesake Bay. Monterey is cute, but I tell you it ain't a patch on Santa Cruz! They do have a lovely aquarium there, in Monterey though.

But getting back to the bay itself, the bay proper - we're talking a pretty broad expanse of wide, undulating surface, the surface of which is - well, it's weird! It's not like the regular planet surface. It's very permeable. You can stick your hand right through it, and it comes back out wet! But while this seems like the last kind of surface you'd want to go fucking around with a vehicle on, in many ways, the surface of The Monterey Bay is almost perfectly adapted to boats. It's not so strange, once you think about it a bit! Air is quite similar: at first you might say, "air is no surface at all!" But it can't be denied that for a plane speeding through it - as long as that plane is well-designed - there is sufficient "surface" for its wings to find purchase upon, as it cleaves through! 

And so it is with the hull of a boat. Although a boat depends less on its forward velocity and more on its innate buoyancy (similar to a buoy) to generate the "lift" necessary to stay on top of such weird, permeable surfaces as The Monterey Bay. Can science ever stop confounding and amazing us?

So that's the Monterey Bay in a nutshell! There's a really super deep part, too, out there a bit. But you don't want to see that. The surface is pretty much the attraction.

I'd be happy to show you around!