Sorry about the long break between posts. Remind me never again to drive 1,200 miles in seven days! That is way too much with no days of rest in between. The good news is: I made it to the Gilroy Garlic Festival ahead of schedule. But, I have to say that it was not really worth the rush. Gilroy once used to be the largest garlic producer in the world until China took over. Garlic is still big business in Gilroy and when you drive past the food plant you can smell the garlic from across the street.
Let’s start by telling you how I got to Gilroy. After I left Boron I continued traveling on highway 58 towards Mojave. I had read about this airplane graveyard out in the desert and I wanted to take a look. This is just another strange thing on my list of things to see just like the garlic festival. If I wanted regular stuff, I’d go to Disney World.
Well, there is the Mojave airport and there are some big old commercial airplanes, but there is no way to get close to them. I was told that the former owners don’t like people to take pictures. Since I had the camper on my back, I couldn’t drive down the dirt roads that would have taken me closer to the fence. Oh well.

That's life

FYI, while I am writing this, I am sitting at my campground in Sonoma County on top of a hill under a nice old oak tree covered with Spanish moss overlooking some lovely rolling hills and a vineyard. Instead of drinking wine, I am scooping some of my pistachio ice cream. Damn, life is good.
Back to driving. Leaving Mojave was interesting. From a distance I had seen this cluster of big windmills up on top of a mountain range. I hadn’t realized that I would be driving right through them. I had seen some large wind farms in Texas and even had gotten very close to them, but I never saw this many windmills up close.

Windmills

Even more amazing was the change of scenery. I had been driving through desert for the most part since Texas, with some exceptions in northeast Arizona and New Mexico. Now all of a sudden the desert changed to golden colored rolling hills with little green trees dotting them. I was at awe. There was no gradual change, there were no signs saying “Watch out trees and rolling hills coming up” it just happened.

Rolling hills

Not just trees but also farmland was added to the picture. To me these hills have a very gentle look to them, no jagged edges just covered with yellow straw like grass. It is hard to explain, they have something comforting about them, I call them gentle giants. You just have to see them yourself.

Golden hills

California does not have many back roads. Even the secondary two lane highways are crowed with trucks in both directions. I don’t feel comfortable driving on them, too much pressure to keep up with the speed, especially uphill. The lanes are narrow and the oncoming trucks are wide. I have to focus so much on the driving that I have no time to look left and right or to pull over to take pictures.
I called it the quits in Lost Hills, west of Bakersfield. I couldn’t make it to Paso Robles anymore which was only one hour away. I was too tired to do much of anything. It was only Wednesday and I only had less than 200 miles to go to Gilroy or to my campground in Hollister.
The next day I past the James Dean Memorial site at the intersection of highway 46 and 41 without incident.
In San Miguel I pulled over for lunch, something I seldom do. The nice people at the deli helped me figure out if I could take some of the back roads I had picked without getting myself into any trouble, i.e. really steep roads. We figured it all out and I was happy as a clam when I finally drove on a beautiful, quiet two lane road. People always say: “No, you don’t want to take that road, you can’t go fast on that.” My reply: “You bet I do.”
Friday was a day of rest, a look around town and some grocery shopping that’s it. The overnight temperatures had dropped to 60 F, I was freezing. Had to pull out my sleeping bag to stay warm at night.
Saturday was the big day, Garlic festival here I come. I had no idea what to expect. I had only read that this is the world largest garlic festival. This year’s event drew almost 100,000 visitors over three days!

Gilroy Garlic Festival

The first thing you see when you enter the festival grounds are food stands and more food stands. Chicken, beef, some fish (fried), pasta, Asian, American, you name it. Garlic bread and garlic ice cream were also on the menu.

Yes, garlic ice cream

Food wasn’t the only thing you could get. Arts and crafts vendors were equally well represented along side the toe ring booth and the henna tattoo place. There was a big stage for the cooking competition, which took place before I arrived, and some cooking demonstrations.

Showing off

Climbing walls for young and old. Oh yeah, you could also buy some garlic. Did you know that elephant garlic is best used for roasting? Or that it is closer in taste to onion than to garlic? Did you know that garlic only gets harvested twice a year? Early harvest is in June and the late harvest is mid-end July. So all the garlic you buy in May in the supermarkets is almost a year old, who knew.
Well, I bought some great garlic bread, one bulb of just harvested garlic (I still had another bulb at home) and some none garlic related spices. It was too hot (even for me) to eat any of the hot foods. One of the best things at the festival; I saw a really nice photograph of beach houses and the photographer told me where she took the photo. You can read about that in the next blog.
Now you ask, would I go to the festival again. Not really. If I happen to be in the area, maybe.
More to come about sleeping on the streets of San Francisco and the Pacific coast.