I humbly and sincerely apologize. Edie humbly and sincerely apologizes. We are back from the Garlic Festival, it is all about food. We have uploaded the pictures and we did not take any pictures of the food we and others were eating. What were we thinking? It was the heat! About a hundred degrees when we left. Also, I saw a very attractive woman that was nearly naked – that will throw your game off too. Blog? What Blog? Didn’t get a picture of her either. Some food pictures are on their website:
We wind through the neighborhoods of Gilroy to get to the festival grounds. We wonder if the locals hate the traffic and inconvenience.
Traffic started backing up not too far after we left the freeway. We wind all through the SW side of Gilroy making our way to the fields prepared for parking. Three day attendance always exceeds 100,000. Proceeds currently top 2 million dollars for the 3 day event. (We thought that going early on Friday would let us avoid the crowds – NOT!)
Passing through neighborhoods.The California Highway Patrol is out in force – probably all on overtime and hired by the festival to direct traffic.RV parking for the die hard volunteers. They use over 4,000 volunteers to put on the festival.
We think the newest volunteers are the ones stuck in the beating sun, choking on dust kicked up by cars, holding their arms out forever directing folks where to park. We’re hoping if they volunteer for the following year they get a better job.
Parking in the fields is going to leave a lot of cars very dusty.At the height, this whole area will be cars. They have really nice buses that take you from parking to the entrance gate.The orange balloon marks the entrance.Lots of different garlic hats.Looking down on the tents that make up the festival. These are about a fourth of them.We got free samples and I won a USB 12 volt plug in for the car. Or should I say Lex won. She goes through them.
They had a few rain rooms set up. Made for a nice 10 – 15 degree cool down. The smartest vendors had misters around their tents and if you got close to their counter you’d get the effect, and a sales pitch.They have a fun Mercantile with everything garlic and festival for sale.Rock climbing and not very popular at 100 degrees.Gourmet Alley…lots of good and garlicky food.All the mom and pop crafts folks from miles around selling their creations.Edie really liked the glass, I think it was the copper tone that caught her eye.California recycling, turning used wine bottles into wind chimes, spoon holder, trivets, etc. etc. By the way, Edie took this picture. The bottles are heated to a near melting point and are then molded into something else.Folks eating.Another garlic hat.Barbecued turkey legs. You take on a real cave man look when you walk around eating one of these.We didn’t stop at this concession. We are brave in other ways.Hard to describe, not really sweet, definitely garlic…you’d have to be there.A pretty decent country band knocking out tunes.California brown bear hawking energy conservation. Edie thought it the best bear costume she’d seen. We both felt sorry for the man, woman or child inside the hot suit.
I am mostly done for the day. Edie and Lex are going to a James Durbin concert in Santa Cruz. They really liked him from American Idol. He has Tourette’s Syndrome that expresses as facial ticks, which goes away when he sings. An inspiring story. She will tell you all about it tomorrow.
