Touring California

After 2 days of skiing and 3 nights of poor sleep ( did I mention the fire alarm going off at 3:30 a m? ) I was in no shape for one more day of skiing.
So we left Winter and descended to the valley floor not to another winter but to late spring, as the temp in Sacramento was 72. (it was 7 when we left Truckee).
How strange to only drive an hour and find such a difference. California!

With days til we were due back, we chose a venture into uncharted territory. My love of all things Steinbeck has always had me curious about the Salinas valley. So we decided to take a side trip to "southern" California ( well, I did have to use the "other" side of the road map) and get a look at "The Long Valley" myself.

Between here and there we saw the huge wind farm near Benicia,a town of oil refineries whose name is prettier than the town itself, as well as this strange place where the Navy stores it's old ships. There were tons of them just hanging out in this tumwater marsh.



In Gilroy, what ( we thought) was the Garlic Capitol of the World, there seemed to be some garlic cover up. We could find nothing garlic.
I had always imagined a tourist destination of garlic, the water tank for the town shaped like a garlic, garlic stands everywhere.
In fact, we searched all over the town and could find no garlic references, no garlic, but, we could SMELL it!

Finally, banished to the outskirts on the on ramp to the freeway we found the GarlicShoppe gift shop, and we got all things Garlic.
It was very very strange.

On to Salinas, the town where Steinbeck was born. And here, where I expected a small refence, an Historical marker, maybe the Steinbeck house, I found a huge museum, the
National Steinbeck Center!
I was amazed! It was spectacular, the whole end of town devoted to this museum!
As it was after 5 however, we had missed open hours. We did decide to stay the night so we could go tomorrow.

The Salinas valley is a wide open valley with a flat floor extending from one side to the other. So much agriculture going on here, food for people. Tilled fields everywhere, rows and rows of crops already growing strong. I totally can see why people migrated here for the perfect garden.