GREGORY MACDONALD was the former Business and Facilities Administrator for the City of Riverside Public Library and the Riverside County Public Library System, a John Steinbeck scholar, and a Baja California enthusiast. He combined a passion for motorcycles with a fascination for Baja, its history, and its people. As an avid student of the exploration of Baja by the Spaniards and Mexicans, modern-day sailors, and adventurers, MacDonald, too, traveled deep into the mountains to visit isolated missions, towns, and farms.

In the early 1970s, prior to the completion of Federal Highway 1 in 1975, he rode the thousand-mile length of the peninsula, alone, on his motorcycle, mostly off road. Later, he and his dog, Maggie, traveled around the United States in a rig exactly like John Steinbeck's, following the itinerary of the author's Travels With Charlie.

MacDonald maintained an extensive library on Baja and documented his own travels with photographs and essays, including a land-based version of the voyage Steinbeck chronicled in The Log from the Sea of Cortez. In Cabo Pulmo, on the East Cape, he used an outboard motor—a Johnson Sea Horse—identical to the one that bedeviled Steinbeck, which the latter dubbed "Sea Cow" for its low power and lack of reliability.

Gregory MacDonald was raised in Riverside, California, where he lived with his wife, Virginia, and his son, Matthew, who both are deceased. MacDonald passed away in 2015.