![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lwoodIn reference to the commends made about the Day Zero entry:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lysana: What is cadhla's issue with Buttonwillow, Gateway to the Greater Bakersfield Area?
arc_stormcrow: Thanks! I took the picture for the raven icon at Point Reyes a couple years ago. They'll be coming up a lot in the course of this account..
pearlshadow, you didn't include room for Old Man Coyote and Kokopelli, who would very obviously be involved in your scenario. After all, it's important to include the locals in such activities...
jdgreybraid Yep, northern Arizona -- although we'll be going as far south as Phoenix, Tuscon just isn't in the cards this time. Sorry!
And now, on with the show!
There are pictures, guys, just not today. Wait for Day Two...
Leaving was slow, slow, slow! All Diana and I wanted was to get on the road, but there came a set of snarled annoyances that kept us from leaving when we would have liked. They made us a couple hours later getting on the road.
Since the Trusty iBook and I made the Trainabout in 2001, its battery and power suppply had both died (within days of each other!). With the help oftarzxf, the power supply was replaced, but the battery wouldn't be as easy; replacements cost $100 and the one we thought we'd ordered hadn't actually been ordered. However, it also happened that ardaniel had just fried her iBook's connection to its power supply. So, our first stop was the glorious Cohabitation House of West Sacramento, home of ardaniel and tarzxf, that the iBook not be limited to only being within 12 feet of a power outlet. That "the car" was also a power outlet thanks to an AC inverter I'd purchased five years ago and repaired last week wasn't really the same...
The stop at Cohabitation House was a momntary drive-by, just swapping batteries and fond, emphatic mutual declarations that we see more of each other, dammit.
Then, Diana and I tried to find an on-ramp to I-5. Actually, that was easy; it was a matter of finding the freaking parking lot of stalled cars. We got back off as soon as an exit likely to have a sit-down restaurant presented itself, and found ourselves at Shari's -- it's Yet Another 24-Hour Family Restaurant, better than Denny's. That was fine enough, and we saw a small upscale grocery store which we proceeded to loot for supplies for the next couple of weeks, like canned soup, salami, and the like.
Yeah. No cooler. Ice chests take up ridiculous amounts of space, they're heavy, and you have to keep replacing the ice. Sure, there has to be milk in the tea and the coffee; buy some cans of evaporated milk and a churchkey.
Leaving enough time for all the traffic to die down was macde much easier by the fact that I'd inadvertently left my toiletries bag in Oakland... oops. Had to replace all that...
But once that was all settled, we got back on I-5 and started the flat-out run to the foot of the Grapevine, aka the Tehachapis, aka The Southern Border of Westria, probably aka some five other names. What lay between us and sleep was the vasty glaciated plain known as the Central or San Joaquin Valley (in Westria, this is the Great Valley).
I've been on almost all of Interstate 5, actually, in the decade-plus since my first visit to California. It stretches 1375.62 miles from its feet in Mexico to its stretchy fingertips in Canada. 792 of these are California; I've been from LA to San Diego, from LA to the Bay Area, from the Bay Area to Eugene, Oregon -- that gets me almost all of the California miles, except the handful from San Diego to the Mexican border. In Oregon, where like New Jersey you're not allowed to pump your own gasoline, I've only been as far as Eugene, so not much there. In Washington State, I've done damn near the whole thing, from south of Seattle (near Rainier) to the Canadian border (O, Canada!).
Actually, come to think of it, I did document the Seattle to Victoria and Vancouver thing (part one and part two, and part two has some pictures associated with it). The LiveJournal entries include spontaneous haiku and the determination of the existence of ghetto-style Eggs Benedict, which between them make them provably more amusing than this one, which mostly says "we drove I-5 a lot, whee!".
Anyway, I think I can reasonably say that I have a wide and varied experience with I-5 in all its many faces, and can therefore give you a review of the San Joaquin portion compared with the other few hundred miles.
The only places less interesting to look at than this particular chunk of I-5 are, in my experience, eastern Nebraska and the Bonneville Salt Flats. This encourages the persons in your car to plunge headlong into philosophy, theology, and other deep waters while flailing about the radio dial looking for something interesting. These debates will, at least if you're at all magically inclined, often involve the theory if not the practice off playing fast and loose with time, space, and Euclidean geometry. I-5 from Sacramento to Buttonwillow is actually favorite for this, because you can play Mrs. Whatsit's Skirt all day and no-one will notice.
However, I do recommend resurfacing in consentual reality for munching at Pea Soup Andersen's in Santa Nella (more on this near the end of things when I talk about Solvang/the Danehold) and/or Harris Ranch in Coalinga (halfway through the I-5 run). We did neither, though: just jetting through the darkness like something out of "Mrs Todd's Shortcut," fishing for stuff on the radio.
We did find a classical station amongst the Mexican polka and country/western. It was playing a symphony that took forever and three days to actually end. The next station, though, would pretty much have to be either country/western or... Mexican, emphasis on polka.
You know... country music was a road trip staple in my family. Good songs, old songs, funny songs. "I'm Going to Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home." "A Boy Named Sue." Stuff like that.
I mean, the new stuff's passable, but the playlists were so damned short I'm sure Clear Channel has a hand in this somewhere.
Some of them, though, are only funny if you're of a certain bent -- like I Don't Have to Be Me 'til Monday, which to Diana and I sounded like an interesting idea for a party concept, actually, just kinda differently than how the songwriter was almost certainly thinking. *cough*
Anyway, even the Most Boringest Part of I-5 has to end somewhere, and in this case it's just south of Bakersfield. Bakersfield iis on CA-99, though--
Right, another tangent. I just found out while researching this entry that I-5 replaced US 99. Now, I-5 becomes BC-99 when you get to British Columbia, and CA-99 parallels I-5 on the other side of the Valley. I bet that CA-99 goes where US-99 used to... okay, I'm done, back from tangent:
Bakersfield is on CA-99, which is still a good twentyish miles away from I-5. But it's a good latitude at which to stop, because it's not more than thirty miles from the foot of the Grapevine, a short range of mountains that, depending on which eyes you're using, separates the San Joaquin Valley from the Los Angeles Basin, or Westria from Elaya.
We wanted to take that pass in daylight to get a good look at the countryside and plot out where the battle (yep, a battle) would take place. Buttonwillow was long the place where Greyhound busses would stop before climbing the hill, and that only gave more reason for motels to accrue there.
Buttonwillow, then, was a pretty darn logical place to stop. Pulling off the freeway revealed several motels, including...
lysana: What is cadhla's issue with Buttonwillow, Gateway to the Greater Bakersfield Area?arc_stormcrow: Thanks! I took the picture for the raven icon at Point Reyes a couple years ago. They'll be coming up a lot in the course of this account..pearlshadow, you didn't include room for Old Man Coyote and Kokopelli, who would very obviously be involved in your scenario. After all, it's important to include the locals in such activities...jdgreybraid Yep, northern Arizona -- although we'll be going as far south as Phoenix, Tuscon just isn't in the cards this time. Sorry!And now, on with the show!
There are pictures, guys, just not today. Wait for Day Two...
Leaving was slow, slow, slow! All Diana and I wanted was to get on the road, but there came a set of snarled annoyances that kept us from leaving when we would have liked. They made us a couple hours later getting on the road.
Since the Trusty iBook and I made the Trainabout in 2001, its battery and power suppply had both died (within days of each other!). With the help of
tarzxf, the power supply was replaced, but the battery wouldn't be as easy; replacements cost $100 and the one we thought we'd ordered hadn't actually been ordered. However, it also happened that ardaniel had just fried her iBook's connection to its power supply. So, our first stop was the glorious Cohabitation House of West Sacramento, home of ardaniel and tarzxf, that the iBook not be limited to only being within 12 feet of a power outlet. That "the car" was also a power outlet thanks to an AC inverter I'd purchased five years ago and repaired last week wasn't really the same...The stop at Cohabitation House was a momntary drive-by, just swapping batteries and fond, emphatic mutual declarations that we see more of each other, dammit.
Then, Diana and I tried to find an on-ramp to I-5. Actually, that was easy; it was a matter of finding the freaking parking lot of stalled cars. We got back off as soon as an exit likely to have a sit-down restaurant presented itself, and found ourselves at Shari's -- it's Yet Another 24-Hour Family Restaurant, better than Denny's. That was fine enough, and we saw a small upscale grocery store which we proceeded to loot for supplies for the next couple of weeks, like canned soup, salami, and the like.
Yeah. No cooler. Ice chests take up ridiculous amounts of space, they're heavy, and you have to keep replacing the ice. Sure, there has to be milk in the tea and the coffee; buy some cans of evaporated milk and a churchkey.
Leaving enough time for all the traffic to die down was macde much easier by the fact that I'd inadvertently left my toiletries bag in Oakland... oops. Had to replace all that...
But once that was all settled, we got back on I-5 and started the flat-out run to the foot of the Grapevine, aka the Tehachapis, aka The Southern Border of Westria, probably aka some five other names. What lay between us and sleep was the vasty glaciated plain known as the Central or San Joaquin Valley (in Westria, this is the Great Valley).
I've been on almost all of Interstate 5, actually, in the decade-plus since my first visit to California. It stretches 1375.62 miles from its feet in Mexico to its stretchy fingertips in Canada. 792 of these are California; I've been from LA to San Diego, from LA to the Bay Area, from the Bay Area to Eugene, Oregon -- that gets me almost all of the California miles, except the handful from San Diego to the Mexican border. In Oregon, where like New Jersey you're not allowed to pump your own gasoline, I've only been as far as Eugene, so not much there. In Washington State, I've done damn near the whole thing, from south of Seattle (near Rainier) to the Canadian border (O, Canada!).
Actually, come to think of it, I did document the Seattle to Victoria and Vancouver thing (part one and part two, and part two has some pictures associated with it). The LiveJournal entries include spontaneous haiku and the determination of the existence of ghetto-style Eggs Benedict, which between them make them provably more amusing than this one, which mostly says "we drove I-5 a lot, whee!".
Anyway, I think I can reasonably say that I have a wide and varied experience with I-5 in all its many faces, and can therefore give you a review of the San Joaquin portion compared with the other few hundred miles.
The only places less interesting to look at than this particular chunk of I-5 are, in my experience, eastern Nebraska and the Bonneville Salt Flats. This encourages the persons in your car to plunge headlong into philosophy, theology, and other deep waters while flailing about the radio dial looking for something interesting. These debates will, at least if you're at all magically inclined, often involve the theory if not the practice off playing fast and loose with time, space, and Euclidean geometry. I-5 from Sacramento to Buttonwillow is actually favorite for this, because you can play Mrs. Whatsit's Skirt all day and no-one will notice.
However, I do recommend resurfacing in consentual reality for munching at Pea Soup Andersen's in Santa Nella (more on this near the end of things when I talk about Solvang/the Danehold) and/or Harris Ranch in Coalinga (halfway through the I-5 run). We did neither, though: just jetting through the darkness like something out of "Mrs Todd's Shortcut," fishing for stuff on the radio.
We did find a classical station amongst the Mexican polka and country/western. It was playing a symphony that took forever and three days to actually end. The next station, though, would pretty much have to be either country/western or... Mexican, emphasis on polka.
You know... country music was a road trip staple in my family. Good songs, old songs, funny songs. "I'm Going to Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home." "A Boy Named Sue." Stuff like that.
I mean, the new stuff's passable, but the playlists were so damned short I'm sure Clear Channel has a hand in this somewhere.
Some of them, though, are only funny if you're of a certain bent -- like I Don't Have to Be Me 'til Monday, which to Diana and I sounded like an interesting idea for a party concept, actually, just kinda differently than how the songwriter was almost certainly thinking. *cough*
Anyway, even the Most Boringest Part of I-5 has to end somewhere, and in this case it's just south of Bakersfield. Bakersfield iis on CA-99, though--
Right, another tangent. I just found out while researching this entry that I-5 replaced US 99. Now, I-5 becomes BC-99 when you get to British Columbia, and CA-99 parallels I-5 on the other side of the Valley. I bet that CA-99 goes where US-99 used to... okay, I'm done, back from tangent:
Bakersfield is on CA-99, which is still a good twentyish miles away from I-5. But it's a good latitude at which to stop, because it's not more than thirty miles from the foot of the Grapevine, a short range of mountains that, depending on which eyes you're using, separates the San Joaquin Valley from the Los Angeles Basin, or Westria from Elaya.
We wanted to take that pass in daylight to get a good look at the countryside and plot out where the battle (yep, a battle) would take place. Buttonwillow was long the place where Greyhound busses would stop before climbing the hill, and that only gave more reason for motels to accrue there.
Buttonwillow, then, was a pretty darn logical place to stop. Pulling off the freeway revealed several motels, including...
[Error: Irreparable invalid markup ('<a [...] ?the>') in entry. Owner must fix manually. Raw contents below.]
In reference to the commends made about the Day Zero entry:
<lj site="livejournal.com" user="lysana">: What <em>is</em> <lj site="livejournal.com" user="cadhla">'s issue with Buttonwillow, Gateway to the Greater Bakersfield Area?
<lj site="livejournal.com" user="arc_stormcrow">: Thanks! I took the picture for the raven icon at Point Reyes a couple years ago. They'll be coming up a <em>lot</em> in the course of this account..
<lj site="livejournal.com" user="pearlshadow">, you didn't include room for Old Man Coyote and Kokopelli, who would very obviously be involved in your scenario. After all, it's important to include the locals in such activities...
<lj site="livejournal.com" user="jdgreybraid"> Yep, northern Arizona -- although we'll be going as far south as Phoenix, Tuscon just isn't in the cards this time. Sorry!
And now, on with the show!
<lj-cut text="Fare onward, ever onward, ever on...">
There <em>are</em> pictures</em>, guys, just not today. Wait for Day Two...
Leaving was slow, slow, slow! All Diana and I wanted was to get on the road, but there came a set of snarled annoyances that kept us from leaving when we would have liked. They made us a couple hours later getting on the road.
Since the Trusty iBook and I made the Trainabout in 2001, its battery and power suppply had both died (within days of each other!). With the help of <lj site="livejournal.com" user="tarzxf">, the power supply was replaced, but the battery wouldn't be as easy; replacements cost $100 and the one we thought we'd ordered hadn't actually been ordered. However, it also happened that <lj site="livejournal.com" user="ardaniel"> had just fried <em>her</em> iBook's connection to <em>its</em> power supply. So, our first stop was the glorious Cohabitation House of West Sacramento, home of <lj site="livejournal.com" user="ardaniel"> and <lj site="livejournal.com" user="tarzxf">, that the iBook not be limited to only being within 12 feet of a power outlet. That "the car" was also a power outlet thanks to an AC inverter I'd purchased five years ago and repaired last week wasn't really the same...
The stop at Cohabitation House was a momntary drive-by, just swapping batteries and fond, emphatic mutual declarations that we see more of each other, dammit.
Then, Diana and I tried to find an on-ramp to I-5. Actually, that was easy; it was a matter of finding <em>the freaking parking lot of stalled cars</em>. We got back off as soon as an exit likely to have a sit-down restaurant presented itself, and found ourselves at Shari's -- it's Yet Another 24-Hour Family Restaurant, better than Denny's. That was fine enough, and we saw a small upscale grocery store which we proceeded to loot for supplies for the next couple of weeks, like canned soup, salami, and the like.
Yeah. No cooler. Ice chests take up ridiculous amounts of space, they're heavy, and you have to keep replacing the ice. Sure, there has to be milk in the tea and the coffee; buy some cans of evaporated milk and a churchkey.
Leaving enough time for all the traffic to die down was macde much easier by the fact that I'd inadvertently left my toiletries bag in Oakland... oops. Had to replace all <em>that</em>...
But once <em>that</em> was all settled, we got back on I-5 and started the flat-out run to the foot of the Grapevine, aka the Tehachapis, aka The Southern Border of Westria, probably aka some five other names. What lay between us and sleep was the vasty glaciated plain known as the Central or San Joaquin Valley (in Westria, this is the Great Valley).
I've been on almost all of Interstate 5, actually, in the decade-plus since my first visit to California. It stretches 1375.62 miles from its feet in Mexico to its stretchy fingertips in Canada. 792 of these are California; I've been from LA to San Diego, from LA to the Bay Area, from the Bay Area to Eugene, Oregon -- that gets me almost all of the California miles, except the handful from San Diego to the Mexican border. In Oregon, where like New Jersey you're not allowed to pump your own gasoline, I've only been as far as Eugene, so not much there. In Washington State, I've done damn near the whole thing, from south of Seattle (near Rainier) to the Canadian border (O, Canada!).
Actually, come to think of it, I did document the Seattle to Victoria and Vancouver</a> thing (<a href="http://lwood.livejournal.com/32079.html">part one</a> and <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/lwood/32275.html">part two</a>, and part two has some <a href="http://www.snugharbor.com/gallery/vancouver-island/">pictures</a> associated with it). The LiveJournal entries include spontaneous haiku and the determination of the existence of ghetto-style Eggs Benedict, which between them make them provably more amusing than this one, which mostly says "we drove I-5 a lot, whee!".
Anyway, I think I can reasonably say that I have a wide and varied experience with I-5 in all its many faces, and can therefore give you a review of the San Joaquin portion compared with the other few hundred miles.
The only places less interesting to look at than this particular chunk of I-5 are, in my experience, <a href="http://www.snugharbor.com/~lwood/trainabout/27mar.html">eastern Nebraska</a> and the Bonneville Salt Flats. This encourages the persons in your car to plunge headlong into philosophy, theology, and other deep waters while flailing about the radio dial looking for something interesting. These debates will, at least if you're at all magically inclined, often involve the theory if not the practice off playing fast and loose with time, space, and Euclidean geometry. I-5 from Sacramento to Buttonwillow is actually favorite for this, because you can play <a href="http://math.cofc.edu/faculty/kasman/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumber=mf41">Mrs. Whatsit's Skirt</a> <em>all day</em> and no-one will notice.
However, I do recommend resurfacing in consentual reality for munching at <a href="http://www.peasoupandersens.net/">Pea Soup Andersen's</a> in Santa Nella (more on this near the end of things when I talk about Solvang/the Danehold) and/or <a href="http://www.harrisranch.com/">Harris Ranch</a> in Coalinga (halfway through the I-5 run). We did neither, though: just jetting through the darkness like something out of "Mrs Todd's Shortcut," fishing for stuff on the radio.
We <em>did</em> find a classical station amongst the Mexican polka and country/western. It was playing a symphony that took forever and three days to actually <em>end</em>. The next station, though, would pretty much have to be either country/western or... Mexican, emphasis on polka.
You know... country music was a road trip staple in my family. Good songs, old songs, funny songs. "I'm Going to Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home." "A Boy Named Sue." Stuff like that.
I mean, the new stuff's passable, but the playlists were so damned short I'm sure Clear Channel has a hand in this somewhere.
Some of them, though, are only funny if you're of a certain bent -- like <a href="http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/I-Don't-Have-To-Be-Me-'Til-Monday-lyrics-Steve-Azar/B74A06E147A548F748256CB80024FA5B">I Don't Have to Be Me 'til Monday</a>, which to Diana and I sounded like an interesting idea for a party concept, actually, just kinda differently than how the songwriter was almost certainly thinking. *cough*
Anyway, even the Most Boringest Part of I-5 has to end <em>somewhere</em>, and in this case it's just south of Bakersfield. Bakersfield iis on CA-99, though--
Right, another tangent. I just found out while researching this entry that I-5 replaced US 99. Now, I-5 becomes BC-99 when you get to British Columbia, and CA-99 parallels I-5 on the other side of the Valley. I bet that CA-99 goes where US-99 used to... okay, I'm done, back from tangent:
Bakersfield is on CA-99, which is still a good twentyish miles away from I-5. But it's a good latitude at which to stop, because it's not more than thirty miles from the foot of the Grapevine, a short range of mountains that, depending on which eyes you're using, separates the San Joaquin Valley from the Los Angeles Basin, or Westria from Elaya.
We wanted to take that pass in daylight to get a good look at the countryside and plot out where the battle (yep, a battle) would take place. Buttonwillow was long the place where Greyhound busses would stop before climbing the hill, and that only gave more reason for motels to accrue there.
Buttonwillow, then, was a pretty darn logical place to stop. Pulling off the freeway revealed several motels, including...
<a href="http://www.motel6.com/reservations/motel_detail.asp?MotelId=1354"?The Palatial Motel 6 of Buttonwillow!</a>
If I keep saying "Buttonwillow", do I find out why it makes <lj site="livejournal.com" user="cadhla"> 'splode?
Anyway, look, our heads grew heavy and our eyes grew dim; we had to stop for the night. Happily, there were no mission bells, and so, we would be permitted to leave California the verrrrry next day, whose account, I assure you, will be far more interesting, on account of it has very little I-5 in it, and many more pictures.
Stay tuned, Constant Readers!
-- Lorrie
PS: Post is unproofread; deal.
PPS: Leaving Albuquerque tonight, may not be able to post from tomorrow's stop, will probably be able to post from Phoenix on Wednesday.
<lj site="livejournal.com" user="lysana">: What <em>is</em> <lj site="livejournal.com" user="cadhla">'s issue with Buttonwillow, Gateway to the Greater Bakersfield Area?
<lj site="livejournal.com" user="arc_stormcrow">: Thanks! I took the picture for the raven icon at Point Reyes a couple years ago. They'll be coming up a <em>lot</em> in the course of this account..
<lj site="livejournal.com" user="pearlshadow">, you didn't include room for Old Man Coyote and Kokopelli, who would very obviously be involved in your scenario. After all, it's important to include the locals in such activities...
<lj site="livejournal.com" user="jdgreybraid"> Yep, northern Arizona -- although we'll be going as far south as Phoenix, Tuscon just isn't in the cards this time. Sorry!
And now, on with the show!
<lj-cut text="Fare onward, ever onward, ever on...">
There <em>are</em> pictures</em>, guys, just not today. Wait for Day Two...
Leaving was slow, slow, slow! All Diana and I wanted was to get on the road, but there came a set of snarled annoyances that kept us from leaving when we would have liked. They made us a couple hours later getting on the road.
Since the Trusty iBook and I made the Trainabout in 2001, its battery and power suppply had both died (within days of each other!). With the help of <lj site="livejournal.com" user="tarzxf">, the power supply was replaced, but the battery wouldn't be as easy; replacements cost $100 and the one we thought we'd ordered hadn't actually been ordered. However, it also happened that <lj site="livejournal.com" user="ardaniel"> had just fried <em>her</em> iBook's connection to <em>its</em> power supply. So, our first stop was the glorious Cohabitation House of West Sacramento, home of <lj site="livejournal.com" user="ardaniel"> and <lj site="livejournal.com" user="tarzxf">, that the iBook not be limited to only being within 12 feet of a power outlet. That "the car" was also a power outlet thanks to an AC inverter I'd purchased five years ago and repaired last week wasn't really the same...
The stop at Cohabitation House was a momntary drive-by, just swapping batteries and fond, emphatic mutual declarations that we see more of each other, dammit.
Then, Diana and I tried to find an on-ramp to I-5. Actually, that was easy; it was a matter of finding <em>the freaking parking lot of stalled cars</em>. We got back off as soon as an exit likely to have a sit-down restaurant presented itself, and found ourselves at Shari's -- it's Yet Another 24-Hour Family Restaurant, better than Denny's. That was fine enough, and we saw a small upscale grocery store which we proceeded to loot for supplies for the next couple of weeks, like canned soup, salami, and the like.
Yeah. No cooler. Ice chests take up ridiculous amounts of space, they're heavy, and you have to keep replacing the ice. Sure, there has to be milk in the tea and the coffee; buy some cans of evaporated milk and a churchkey.
Leaving enough time for all the traffic to die down was macde much easier by the fact that I'd inadvertently left my toiletries bag in Oakland... oops. Had to replace all <em>that</em>...
But once <em>that</em> was all settled, we got back on I-5 and started the flat-out run to the foot of the Grapevine, aka the Tehachapis, aka The Southern Border of Westria, probably aka some five other names. What lay between us and sleep was the vasty glaciated plain known as the Central or San Joaquin Valley (in Westria, this is the Great Valley).
I've been on almost all of Interstate 5, actually, in the decade-plus since my first visit to California. It stretches 1375.62 miles from its feet in Mexico to its stretchy fingertips in Canada. 792 of these are California; I've been from LA to San Diego, from LA to the Bay Area, from the Bay Area to Eugene, Oregon -- that gets me almost all of the California miles, except the handful from San Diego to the Mexican border. In Oregon, where like New Jersey you're not allowed to pump your own gasoline, I've only been as far as Eugene, so not much there. In Washington State, I've done damn near the whole thing, from south of Seattle (near Rainier) to the Canadian border (O, Canada!).
Actually, come to think of it, I did document the Seattle to Victoria and Vancouver</a> thing (<a href="http://lwood.livejournal.com/32079.html">part one</a> and <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/lwood/32275.html">part two</a>, and part two has some <a href="http://www.snugharbor.com/gallery/vancouver-island/">pictures</a> associated with it). The LiveJournal entries include spontaneous haiku and the determination of the existence of ghetto-style Eggs Benedict, which between them make them provably more amusing than this one, which mostly says "we drove I-5 a lot, whee!".
Anyway, I think I can reasonably say that I have a wide and varied experience with I-5 in all its many faces, and can therefore give you a review of the San Joaquin portion compared with the other few hundred miles.
The only places less interesting to look at than this particular chunk of I-5 are, in my experience, <a href="http://www.snugharbor.com/~lwood/trainabout/27mar.html">eastern Nebraska</a> and the Bonneville Salt Flats. This encourages the persons in your car to plunge headlong into philosophy, theology, and other deep waters while flailing about the radio dial looking for something interesting. These debates will, at least if you're at all magically inclined, often involve the theory if not the practice off playing fast and loose with time, space, and Euclidean geometry. I-5 from Sacramento to Buttonwillow is actually favorite for this, because you can play <a href="http://math.cofc.edu/faculty/kasman/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumber=mf41">Mrs. Whatsit's Skirt</a> <em>all day</em> and no-one will notice.
However, I do recommend resurfacing in consentual reality for munching at <a href="http://www.peasoupandersens.net/">Pea Soup Andersen's</a> in Santa Nella (more on this near the end of things when I talk about Solvang/the Danehold) and/or <a href="http://www.harrisranch.com/">Harris Ranch</a> in Coalinga (halfway through the I-5 run). We did neither, though: just jetting through the darkness like something out of "Mrs Todd's Shortcut," fishing for stuff on the radio.
We <em>did</em> find a classical station amongst the Mexican polka and country/western. It was playing a symphony that took forever and three days to actually <em>end</em>. The next station, though, would pretty much have to be either country/western or... Mexican, emphasis on polka.
You know... country music was a road trip staple in my family. Good songs, old songs, funny songs. "I'm Going to Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home." "A Boy Named Sue." Stuff like that.
I mean, the new stuff's passable, but the playlists were so damned short I'm sure Clear Channel has a hand in this somewhere.
Some of them, though, are only funny if you're of a certain bent -- like <a href="http://www.sing365.com/music/lyric.nsf/I-Don't-Have-To-Be-Me-'Til-Monday-lyrics-Steve-Azar/B74A06E147A548F748256CB80024FA5B">I Don't Have to Be Me 'til Monday</a>, which to Diana and I sounded like an interesting idea for a party concept, actually, just kinda differently than how the songwriter was almost certainly thinking. *cough*
Anyway, even the Most Boringest Part of I-5 has to end <em>somewhere</em>, and in this case it's just south of Bakersfield. Bakersfield iis on CA-99, though--
Right, another tangent. I just found out while researching this entry that I-5 replaced US 99. Now, I-5 becomes BC-99 when you get to British Columbia, and CA-99 parallels I-5 on the other side of the Valley. I bet that CA-99 goes where US-99 used to... okay, I'm done, back from tangent:
Bakersfield is on CA-99, which is still a good twentyish miles away from I-5. But it's a good latitude at which to stop, because it's not more than thirty miles from the foot of the Grapevine, a short range of mountains that, depending on which eyes you're using, separates the San Joaquin Valley from the Los Angeles Basin, or Westria from Elaya.
We wanted to take that pass in daylight to get a good look at the countryside and plot out where the battle (yep, a battle) would take place. Buttonwillow was long the place where Greyhound busses would stop before climbing the hill, and that only gave more reason for motels to accrue there.
Buttonwillow, then, was a pretty darn logical place to stop. Pulling off the freeway revealed several motels, including...
<a href="http://www.motel6.com/reservations/motel_detail.asp?MotelId=1354"?The Palatial Motel 6 of Buttonwillow!</a>
If I keep saying "Buttonwillow", do I find out why it makes <lj site="livejournal.com" user="cadhla"> 'splode?
Anyway, look, our heads grew heavy and our eyes grew dim; we had to stop for the night. Happily, there were no mission bells, and so, we would be permitted to leave California the verrrrry next day, whose account, I assure you, will be far more interesting, on account of it has very little I-5 in it, and many more pictures.
Stay tuned, Constant Readers!
-- Lorrie
PS: Post is unproofread; deal.
PPS: Leaving Albuquerque tonight, may not be able to post from tomorrow's stop, will probably be able to post from Phoenix on Wednesday.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-05-04 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-05-04 08:47 am (UTC)And are you asserting you know how to tesser?
no subject
Date: 2004-05-12 04:46 pm (UTC)-- Lorrie