October 1, 2012
Elks Lodge, Salinas, California
After finishing a good night’s sleep on Saturday morning, we were up late and got a late start. No sense calling it any other way. But, this wasn’t an issue since we were only heading a couple of hours south to Salinas. From Pacifica, we headed north for a couple of miles on CA-1, then south on I-280 all the way to San Jose. I wish we could have “seen the way”, since we had a GPS brain fart there when we found out that vehicles over 4 tons aren’t allowed on CA-85 between CA-87 and US-101. Oops; we’re about 25 tons total, so a U-Turn was needed. Back to I-280, we completed the route to US-101 southbound with only about 6 miles of diversion. The restriction seems to be related to truck noise as opposed to a physical limitation, but I decided not to tempt the traffic enforcement gods.
Anyway, no harm; no foul. We were parked at the Salinas Elks Lodge by early afternoon, not that there was anything going on there. As we travel, we find that each Lodge seems to have a different “personality”. Some are active for lunch during the week, others for dinners, still others focussed on weekend activities. It all depends on the makeup of the membership at that location.
We had two objectives in stopping this time. Geri wanted to check out the Outlet Malls in Gilroy, plus maybe some “Garlic Capitol of the World” tourist traps. I wanted to make a day trip out to Monterey. We were one-for-two, with the short drive up to Gilroy accomplished on Sunday.
Unfortunately, we had another “weather event” creep up on us, this one in the opposite direction from the sweaters-and-rain-gear of San Francisco. This time, a high pressure system set up north of us and created an off-shore wind flow. Since the ocean is the temperature moderator, this pattern brings a heat spike and before we knew it, temperatures hit 103°F in Gilroy according to the Rover. Hey, we’re not in Phoenix!
Fortunately, the heat didn’t spike as high in Salinas, but Monday’s forecast for continued extreme heat changed our plans for a day trip into a day of air conditioning with a quick trip to Costco (where they already had the Christmas displays out!) and a few other stores. No matter; we’ll have other opportunities to visit Monterey. Tomorrow, we continue south, and it’s supposed to cool off.
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