WHY AM I IN DAVIS??

3 July 2020

It seems strange to be sitting here in Davis on July 3.  Normally we would be in Santa Barbara preparing for Tom's big BBQ on the beach, but the coronavirus has kept us home and Santa Barbara has closed the beaches.  Tom and Walt's brother-in-law Joe will be a lot richer this July, without having to buy out Costco for meat to BBQ  this year.

It's about 400 miles from Davis to Santa Barbara,  Google says it's a 6 hour drive.  Walt drives it in 7 hours--it takes me 8.  We have been driving this route for more than 20 years on this weekend (as well as a few other times)

I know every rest stop along the way.  Walt stops at them to use the restroom.  If I'm driving alone, I stop to check out the machines and see if  there is anything I want to eat.

We stop south of San Jose at a Five Guys for lunch.  We discovered Five Guys several years ago and enjoy the free peanuts and the good hamburgers.

Just south of Five  Guys is Gilroy, the garlic capital of California.  Gilroy also has cherry orchards and in July, the cherries are ripe and we stop to get a bag of cherries to take to Alice Nan's house.

On south through the territory that John Steinbeck writes about.  My favorite Steinbeck book is "East of Eden," in the beginning of which he describes the area that will eventually become the highway we are driving along and I think of that book whenever we drive through there.  There is a Steinbeck museum in Salinas and we stopped one time to see the museum

It's a small museum but set up great, where there are sections for many of his books,

which bring the books to life.  Also sections for other parts of his life.  Surprising how complete it is for such a small place.

Steinbeck's house is now a restaurant.

We hoped to have dinner there, but alas it was closed the day we stopped.

After Salinas there are more miles that pass through King City, where we frequently have dinner on the way home, and then down past Camp Roberts, a National Guard post run by the California Army Guard.

It's an agricultural area and there are fields on both sides of the highway with signs letting drivers know what is being grown in the fields.

Eventually we come to Buellton, where there is Pea Soup Anderson's.  If we have left Davis late, we will stop here for dinner.  If we leave Davis early, we will pass  by and have dinner at Alice Nan's.  We usually get their pea soup dinner special, which comes with unlimited soup and all sorts of things to put in the soup.

With the soup you get a choice of drinks -- soft drinks or a milk shake (also unlimited).

When we reach the ocean, it feels like we are "there" but it is still several miles to Santa Barbara itself, but it's always nice to arrive at Alice Nan & Joe's house and settle in for a glass of wine and a visit.

We will miss all of that this weekend.