When we drove to Santa Barbara on Friday, we encountered
horrific traffic. Fortunately most of it was going the opposite way,
but we did hit a really bad patch a few miles from Gilroy (the garlic
capital of the world).
This happens to be a part of California that Walt is quite
familiar with because in the days when he used to go out on field trips to
work with farmers on water projects, this was an area he visited often.
So, being the smart, resourceful person that he is, he got off the freeway
at Morgan Hill and drove into town so he could drive the city streets until
we could see that traffic on the freeway had loosened up a bit.
Unfortunately, a lot of other people seemed to have that
same idea so it was heavy traffic here too, with the additional slow-down of
stop signs on every corner. But going through an old farm town area,
with its quaint shops and interesting theater marquee....
...was kind of fun. Morgan Hill is near Salinas, where
John Steinbeck lived and set some of his stories, particularly "East of
Eden" which is set right where we were driving (it was less developed then,
of course), hence the outdated movie playing today!
One of the things we passed by too quickly for me to get my
camera out and pointed in the right direction was this cool pumpkin pyramid
at a pumpkin farm that is about to open for business next week. I was
disappointed not to have the photo, but it was not the end of the world.
However, when we got to Santa Barbara, I told Walt that on the way home,
I would like him to drive through Gilroy and Morgan Hill again so I could get
the picture then.
We left Santa Barbara around noon, after a late lunch and
more visiting with Alice Nan and then on up the road. My friend
Kari takes wonderful photos
with her iPhone from a moving car (some really lovely ones from their recent
trip to Europe) and so I was practicing to see if I could also do that.
Many turned out blurry, as my iPhone photos almost always do, but I did like
this picture of the Gabilan Mountains, of which Steinbeck wrote to
eloquently,
and this wall of trees that I really like, just out of King
City. I've always wanted to photograph it, and today I did.
Walt got off the freeway in Gilroy, as I had asked him to,
and we drove through town. I thought I remembered the pumpkin patch
being on a corner lot, but we got all the way through Gilroy and no
pumpkins. It had been a huge pyramid and as this isn't even
October yet, I couldn't imagine they had sold them all over the weekend.
We kept driving and driving and eventually, I just put my
camera away and was going to tell Walt that he could turn at the next stop
and head back up to the freeway, when suddenly there it was: my
pumpkin pyramid!
I got out to take a photo and that's when I discovered that
the disc for the camera was still in the laptop, which meant that all those
photos I took at V's restaurant that I was so thrilled to get, I didn't get
at all. If I hadn't been trying to be surreptitious, so that I just took the
photo quickly and then hid the camera, I would have noticed the warning that
there was no disc in the camera.
Walt parked, unloaded the trunk, got out the laptop and I
retrieved the disk and took my pumpkin photo. I was very happy with it, after
all. We came home, collapsed and watched the two Jeopardy
episodes we had missed, and I watched the Emmy broadcast from last night.
(I realized with great guilt that when Alice Nan turned the show on about
2/3 of the way through it, after Joe had finished watching golf and
football, I asked if we could turn it off because I wanted to watch it from
the beginning. How selfish of me! I knew I had it recorded at
home, but I deprived her of seeing any of it without even thinking
about what I was doing. Sorry, Alice Nan!)
The dogs are very happy to see us again, and I'm glad to be
home.
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