Monday Morning Moment: Near Gilroy, CA

Good morning. This picture was taken from an Amtrak Coast Starlight train south of Gilroy, CA, in September 2018.

The Coast Starlight runs all the way from Seattle to Los Angeles. Over a day and a half, it passes through some incredible scenery, including these fields at the southern edge of the Santa Clara Valley. The entire ride is one of the best ways to see the incredible and varied geography of the west coast. It’s also a great route to connect a cross-country Amtrak trip arriving in Portland, Seattle, Emeryville/San Francisco, or Los Angeles to other cities up and down the coast.

If you know Gilroy, CA, you probably know it because of the garlic. The town’s Garlic Festival turns 41 this summer. In 1978, the town took offense to a French village’s claim to being “garlic capital of the world.” He correctly noted that Gilroy’s Christopher Ranch was – and remains – the top garlic producer on the planet. The first festival drew more than 15,000 guests, and the rest is history. The festival was marred by a mass shooting in 2019 and canceled due to COVID-19 in 2020 but is set to relaunch in July.

This is the first in what I hope to be a running series that will share photos or videos I’ve taken that I like, but don’t really know what else to do with. I hope it’ll provide an opportunity to learn and share more about these places that stick out in my mind but don’t have much context beyond a photo.