Items | Steinbeck Monterey GPS App Walking Tour Mobile Game
Steinbeck Monterey GPS App Walking Tour Mobile Game
Important Information
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Public transportation options are available nearby
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Suitable for all physical fitness levels
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Requires installing a mobile app (instructions in confirmation email)
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Not recommended for visually impaired people
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Not recommended for people with impaired mobility
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Not recommended for seniors over 80
Cancellation policy
For a full refund, cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure time.
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For a full refund, you must cancel at least 24 hours before the experience’s start time.
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Cut-off times are based on the experience’s local time.
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If you cancel less than 24 hours before the experience’s start time, the amount you paid will not be refunded.
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This experience requires a minimum number of travelers. If it’s canceled because the minimum isn’t met, you’ll be offered a different date/experience or a full refund.
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Any changes made less than 24 hours before the experience’s start time will not be accepted.
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Walk through the real Monterey behind John Steinbeck's novels. From Cannery Row and Ed Ricketts's lab to Fisherman's Wharf and the bay's wild shoreline, this self-guided tour blends literary history, sardine-boom drama, marine science, and colorful local characters in the landscapes that shaped Steinbeck's most memorable stories. Solve puzzles, explore the city, and find hidden gems at your own pace. Try a new type of experience with your smartphone, the perfect mix between a walking tour, sightseeing, and a scavenger hunt.
Highlights
From 1 hour to 2 hours
Offered in English
Free Cancellation
Mobile Ticket
From 1 hour to 2 hours
Offered in English
Free Cancellation
Mobile Ticket
What's Included
Full flexibility: start at any hour, take a break at any time and resume later
Next-gen mobile app guides you through each step of your adventure
Explore the surroundings with a truly unique, immersive, GPS-enabled experience
Interactive self-guided tour lets you move at your own pace
A physical tour guide (not included)
Meeting Points
Departure
Old Fisherman's Wharf
Use Google Maps or other map services to arrive at this location. When you arrive, please follow the instructions inside the indicated mobile app closely.
Return
Lovers Point Park
Reach this checkpoint to complete the tour.
Steinbeck Monterey GPS App Walking Tour Mobile Game
About
Walk through the real Monterey behind John Steinbeck's novels. From Cannery Row and Ed Ricketts's lab to Fisherman's Wharf and the bay's wild shoreline, this self-guided tour blends literary history, sardine-boom drama, marine science, and colorful local characters in the landscapes that shaped Steinbeck's most memorable stories. Solve puzzles, explore the city, and find hidden gems at your own pace. Try a new type of experience with your smartphone, the perfect mix between a walking tour, sightseeing, and a scavenger hunt.
Highlights
From 1 hour to 2 hours
Offered in English
Free Cancellation
Mobile Ticket
From 1 hour to 2 hours
Offered in English
Free Cancellation
Mobile Ticket
What's Included
Full flexibility: start at any hour, take a break at any time and resume later
Next-gen mobile app guides you through each step of your adventure
Explore the surroundings with a truly unique, immersive, GPS-enabled experience
Interactive self-guided tour lets you move at your own pace
A physical tour guide (not included)
Meeting Points
Departure
Old Fisherman's Wharf
Use Google Maps or other map services to arrive at this location. When you arrive, please follow the instructions inside the indicated mobile app closely.
Return
Lovers Point Park
Reach this checkpoint to complete the tour.
Itinerary
1
Old Fisherman's Wharf
Explore Old Fisherman's Wharf, where Monterey's harbor history stretches from the Spanish colonial era to the 20th-century sardine boom. Learn how fishing, labor, and trade shaped the waterfront, then capture a photo that still reflects the bay's working past.
10 minutes
2
San Carlos Beach
Explore San Carlos Beach through the historical and ecological lens that shaped John Steinbeck's Monterey. Learn how the shoreline, Ed Ricketts's marine science, and the working waterfront of the 1930s and 1940s informed Steinbeck's realism, then complete a close-looking photo challenge focused on natural detail.
20 minutes
3
Explore Monterey's Cannery Row through its real history: the sardine boom, the collapse of the canning industry, and the streetscape that inspired John Steinbeck's 1945 novel. Find surviving industrial features, historic buildings, and markers that reveal the working waterfront behind today's famous promenade.
10 minutes
4
Steinbeck Plaza
Start at Steinbeck Plaza, where Monterey honors John Steinbeck and the working port city that shaped his writing. Explore the plaza, learn key dates from Steinbeck's life and books, and connect local history to Cannery Row, labor, migration, and the rise and fall of the sardine era.
20 minutes
5
Visit Pacific Biological Laboratories, the former workplace of marine biologist Ed Ricketts and a key site in Monterey's scientific and literary history. Learn how this modest Cannery Row lab, established in 1928, influenced marine ecology, Steinbeck's writing, and the 1940 Sea of Cortez expedition.
10 minutes
6
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Explore the Monterey Bay Aquarium exterior, built inside the 1916 Hovden Cannery. Trace Monterey's timeline from the sardine boom and Steinbeck's Cannery Row to the aquarium's 1984 opening and the rise of modern marine conservation.
20 minutes
7
Hopkins Marine Station
Visit Hopkins Marine Station, founded in 1892, one of the oldest marine laboratories on the Pacific coast. This stop highlights Monterey Bay's scientific history and its connection to the same coastal world that shaped Ed Ricketts and John Steinbeck.
10 minutes
8
Lovers Point Park
Explore Lovers Point Park, where Monterey Bay's dramatic shoreline connects the worlds of John Steinbeck and marine biologist Ed Ricketts. This checkpoint combines a short run challenge with the ecological history of Pacific Grove, highlighting key facts from the 1930s and 1940s that shaped modern marine observation and Steinbeck's way of seeing the coast.
