The La Qunita had a free breakfast (stale cereal, mouldy muffins and some fruit - gotta watch that quality control!) and we were on the road by 9:30ish. Through a tragic failure in navigating (my mistake) it turned out we were mearly 4 hours away from Turlock. It was time to find a road side attraction and fast! Of course we were in middle california, famous for walnuts and picasios (gee, trees!) so we took a quick left and dropped into Apple.
One interlude - Gilroy. Apparently the capital of factory outlet stores, this city had an amazing smell - fresh grown garlic. Glorious.
Anyways, we took the 101 up into San Jose and quickly found we ran out map resolution. Running low on gas we tried to find a gas station or the AAA office in a city marked simply as a large yellow region. Turned out the map was wrong (it was more a green color), we stumbled into a gas station, asked for directions and got hi-res maps (and directions to apple) from the AAA. We stopped at a grimy Taco Bell for lunch (mistake) and then drove to apple.
It wasn't quite what I was expecting. The apple campus has 7 big buildings, each with an icon like header in front of the building. Ultimatly the building looks just like an up scale Electronic Arts, nicer lawns and some icons, but cubical farm after farm with delievery bays all around. We stopped in at the apple store and purchased some trinkets but the just kept on moving.
We wanted to be in Turlock by 5:30 and it already 3 o'clock. We took the 80's (280, 580) got out of the vally (and passed some cool wind farms), and drove until we hit trees. Yup, Turlock is the heart of agriculture country, and yup our map was old. The road we wanted was marked as a little segment on the map - turned out to be continued some 8 miles down on the other side of the 99. After some detective work we found my sisters appartment and the killer speed bumps that surround it.
After a delious meal, we went out to a high school choir concert. Culture! This isn't just a farming community, the kids put showed some real talent and Robert told us the stories of how keen these students really are. It was nice to drive somewhere and not be the driver. We got back to the apartment and went to bed.
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