Garlic, raccoons, and traffic

Jen and I did a little road tripping up north to the Gilroy Garlic Festival. We drove north Friday up the 5 to Gilroy, just south of San Jose. There was a wildfire on the way up, thankfully on the other side of the highway. We camped at Henry W. Coe State Park. Owen joined us camping Friday night and Saturday at the festival. Despite the heavy heat, and signs warning against campfires during the summer, some idiots did burn fires at their campsites on both nights.

Wildlife encounters:

• ground squirrels (many scurrying around the park, as well as the one that peeked out of a burrow hole at our campsite)
• no discernible frogs at Frog Lake
• one garter snake (crossing our path on a short Saturday morning hike)
• one jackrabbit
• a deer on the side of the twisty park road on our way to the festival
• 10,000 raccoons (all trying to eat my food)

Yep, this otherwise serene hillside state park has a bit of an "aggressive" raccoon problem. There were signs up on the pit toilets warning campers to store food in their cars and such. We didn't think too much of it, but did move open bags of chips and jerky to the trunk on Friday night. Owen heard at least one protracted (and failed) attempt to open our borrowed cooler that night. On Saturday, not long after returning from the day's garlic and local cheer, Jen and I walked up to the modern toilets at the vistor's center that promised lights and fewer spiders. On our way there, a guy who I assume was a native northern Californian (scruffy beard, no shirt, ponytail) was trying to dispose of trash and was spooked by a raccoon that popped out of the nearby plastic recycling container. Jen and I were discussing this event when we returned to our campsite. I playfully shined the flashlight around looking for raccoons, and... Hey! There's one! On our picnic table. It jumped down, but then spent some time sizing us up before finally slinking off into the grass. I was a dummy and had left the jerky out. I am convinced that this same thief tried to come back for more later in the evening. I guess we were an easy mark at that point. We spotted a mama 'coon and three coonlings browsing around our car before we huddled in the tent for protection/sleep. I was woken a few times by the sounds of coon fighting in the pitchblack night. Fun.

But, we were there for garlic and weird food. There was plenty of both Saturday, once we fought the traffic in to the parking lot and entered the festival. After starting off with garlic bread and scampi, we moved on to the goodies. The three of us went to a cajun kiosk and shared the fried gator tail, frogs legs, and rattlesnake. I am embarrassed to point out that I liked the garlic ice cream, especially because it was a free sample. Much garlic all around.

Owen had to get back home, so Jen and I roamed the town of Gilroy for a little while. We crashed a local watering hole and found a friendly bartender. It's good to know that locals go to the garlic festival, too, although not every year. This year's temperatures were close to 90 °F, but that was considered better than recent years. He also used to work for Budweiser in the beer tents, and told stories of how the alcohol content in event kegs is lower than normal and the one year that they emptied close to 700 kegs over 3 days.

Sunday, we took the time for a drive down the 101, stopping in San Luis Obispo for a late lunch. This little college town was fun, and deserves another visit. They had a version of the public art animal theme with trout. One memorable example was both obviously and really painted by an elementary school class. Jen pointed out that we can turn anything into beer tourism, and indeed, we visited the local brewpub for SLO Brewing. Sadly, they are closing operations at the end of this month...

Traffic on the 101 from Santa Barbara on south reminded me why we don't take that route very often. Stop and go crawling for hours, man. This was not helped by not one, not two, but three multiple car accidents on the way home.

When we finally plan a trip to the avocado festival in Carpenteria, also north of LA on the 101, we're taking Amtrak.