Road Trips : Los Banos and Salinas : Salinas 1
9 March 2002 (Continued)
We had two cars and there was no realistic way of orienting this trip other than driving both of them to Salinas. Once again, we decided to meet at a Wal-Mart, maybe because that's where my road atlas came from, so I have every location in the country at my fingertips. So it was back across Pacheco Pass for me, through Gilroy, and south on 101. We both made good time, and we were both happy to be in a nice, clean, relatively pleasant-smelling Motel 6.
The room required initiation, so we took care of that before doing further exploring. First time for either of us in both Merced and Monterey counties. There were other firsts too.
Afterward, we made the drive to Castroville for dinner at Norma's Giant Artichoke, home of deep-fried artichoke hearts. To say that Norma piles on the food would be a severe understatement. The gastric revenge started in the gift shop (where Mark bought me a way cool miniature shopping cart) and didn't completely let up until Sunday morning. But there will be no further details. And, lest this sound like a bad review, the food was great. There was just way too much of it.
After dinner, we hit Castroville for a few minutes, including a stop where we acted on out mutual passion for older Mexican supermarkets. Then I took Mark on the Salinas neon tour.