California 2007 Trip Day 5

November 9:

This was sort of a half day. I finished up at Santa Cruz then went to Monterey and Salinas and that was it for the day. I then drove back to San Jose to stay at a friend’s place.

I started out at 8:22 AM after checking out. The cost was $75.90 for the night (I had it wrong yesterday). The 2nd trip meter indicated I had only driven 4.4 miles since I bought gas (it seemed longer). The first trip meter said 1351.1 miles at the start of the day. I skipped breakfast as usual.

The weather was mostly gray like yesterday. However, the sun came out while I was there and it got rather warm in my jacket. On the way back up to San Jose, it rained several places.
Here’s the city rundown:

Santa Cruz:
I’m starting to hate Santa Cruz. Both times I’ve gone over the bridge at Water to get to City Hall I’ve taken the wrong turn and ended up having to improvise my way around. I finally found the parking garage on Locust again and parked.

Since I was there early enough there would be people in the office, finding someone wasn’t a problem. The problem was they were out of zoning maps. Still I paid for a map ($35) and postage ($10) making Santa Cruz the costliest map on this trip (at least in total). I left at about 10 AM.

Monterey:
Due to poor directions and bad street design I got totally lost in Monterey. I ended up parking and walking around with a street map. I knew roughly where I was, but hadn’t found enough streets to actually match up the streets with the map. Eventually, I saw enough street names that I finally found one on the map and everything made sense. I actually was only a few blocks from where I needed to be.

The zoning map cost $2 and I was done at about 10:30. I called R**** and waited in the park eating chocolate to hear back from her (I hadn’t eaten anything for the day). After I finished the chocolate, I went to the library and signed on to yahoo to check out my email. I walked back to the car and as I was shuffling things around R**** called back. I was off to my last city for the day.

Salinas:
Salinas struck me as a bigger city, but no nonsense. I didn’t see any big fancy buildings (other than a church), either in the areas I was driving or off in the distance. The City Hall was a one story non-descript building next to the police department. The offices for zoning were at 65 W. Alisal, which was converted from a Wells Fargo Bank building (you could still see the outlines of the name on the sign that now had the address). I got the zoning map for $30.17 ($28 plus tax). It was around 12:30 when I was done. I was lucky there were open; there was only one person there during lunch.

I changed my shirt in the car and headed for the 101. Unfortunately, my map directions didn’t work too well. It took a few tries to get onto the road I wanted. Finally, I was on it and it did in fact have access to the 101. I think that’s the farthest south I’ve approached San Jose from (although I think I went down to Carmel once). It was occasionally rainy, but otherwise uneventful. The directions were straightforward and I remembered most of the freeways anyway.