Four days off - what to do? Dan and I discussed some exotic locale: Hawaii, Paris, Cancun... but the airlines told us that it would be much less expensive to stay in the area. So Thursday we went over to a "friend of a friend's" and had a wonderful dinner and spent the evening learning how to play all of the latest games (Wii & Rockband). Quite a bit different from Pac Man, that's for sure.
Friday morning we packed up the car and headed south. Just about as far south as you can get without leaving the country. We were on our way to visit my Uncle Don, who lives in San Marcos, about half way between LA and San Diego. We had no real plans and figured that we'd enjoy a relaxing ride through southern California. Let's just say that we both learned something about holiday traffic...
Total Miles: all of them
Mountain View, CA to San Diego, CA
Leaving the Bay Area Friday morning was uneventful. In fact, the entire day was uneventful. We hit the road around 9:30am and after a bit of zig-zagging through Gilroy we made it to I-5. Nothing to do but follow the big concrete ribbon for the next five hours. There's not much to see along the way, either...
Just north of LA the highway crosses the mountains through an area called "the Grapevine". I always figured that it was for the slightly twisting road, but this trip through I noticed that there's actually a town called "Grapevine" in the area. Sort of a "chicken and the egg" question. Traffic was still pretty light; constantly surrounded but also moving at a comfortable speed. There was a bit of fog caught in the tops of the Grapevine mountains, but as soon as we dropped down to the western side, blue skies escorted us for the rest of our daylight driving hours. All along this area I see signs for "Tejon Ranch" but never knew what it was until I got home and looked it up. I found it really intersesting and was partilarily surprised by the size of it!
We arrived at Uncle Don's around 6pm, just in time for another wonderful meal and aftewards made our feeble plans for tomorrow. We were going to sightsee along the coast and into San Diego proper. Easy enough without too much structure. It would be a good day.
Our lungs full of fresh sea air, we made our way back to the car and then continued south. We circled around San Diego proper and crossed a massive bridge onto Coronado. Our lunch destination was the Hotel Del Coranado, a beautiful structure built over 120 years ago. We found easy parking (easy because we would walk 5-6 blocks to the hotel) and made our way to the beach side. There they have outdoor seating and frighteninly expensive burgers. But they were good, and the view was great, and we were on vacation. It was a very enjoyable afternoon.
Sunday - time to go home! But what's that to the east? Over the mountains and glimmering blue? Why, it's the Salton Sea! I had heard many interesting things about this inland sea and seen many pictures of abandoned structures stranded yards away from the receding water. Now I wanted to see it for myself. What better time than the present?
Dan, with his infininte patience, agreed to the 170 mile detour. We left Uncle Don's around 8am and headed east, first into the mountains and then into the desert.
Off-road traffic was heavy this morning. Apparently a lot of people had taken advantage of the long weekend to drag their RV's and dirt bikes into the desert for a little dirt fun. I was just thankful that they were all heading west, while we had the eastbound road to ourselves. And then we saw the sea!
Ok, so it wasn't very spectacular. Even up close it was marginally interesting. I learned later (always later) that the more interesting structures and towns were located on the eastern side of the sea, whereas I had simply planned to drive up the west coast. The Salton Sea City was on our way and judging from the view from Google Earth, it looked to be very interesting. And it was, in a "I need to find something interesting to salvage this detour" sort of way. We drove around the "city" and marveled at the intricate plans for housing development. Apparently the city hasn't given up, but as Dan commented: "If you wanted to practice living in a post-apocolyptic world, this would be the place."
To give you an idea of our own particular traffic hell, it took us over 2 hours to travel 40 miles. Dan, bless his soul, tried his best to be patient as we crawled along. I looked for interesting things to amuse us and kept up a somewhat light banter. It was still hellish. Now I know what real traffic is like.
We figured that once we connected with I-5 we'd be home free. From here we would head north, while the rest of the fools on the road would be going south into LA. We were partly correct: the southern side of the the highway was packed. But so was the northern portion. Again, we were crawling along, surrounded by vehicles on every side. And then, to add insult to injury, the fog closed in. Now we had about 50' of visibility, which didn't really matter anyway because we weren't really moving. But I'd rather be not moving with no one around then surrounded by potential accidents, so while we sat near an exit, waiting for the vehicle in front of us to move, we decided to get off I-5. Dan studied the GPS (I was driving by now) and directed us on to some small farm roads. We were still enveloped by fog, but at least that was the only thing holding us back. We paralled the highway for a while before coming back to it. By then the fog had been left behind and the traffic, while still thick, was moving at a good clip. We got home just before 11pm.
It was a good weekend and I love my Uncle Don, but you can be guaranteed that we'll never drive through California again on Thanksgiving weekend.
