(or); 500 miles of nothin’…
The thing… (there is that confounded thing again)… about driving from San Diego to the Bay Area is that almost the entire drive centers around two unavoidable obstacles. These two geographical annoyances are the California Central Valley and the City of Los Angeles. Oh, you can avoid both of these entanglements if you don’t mind driving a lot farther, but 500 miles is already a long way to go.
I suppose many of you are not familiar with California’s Central Valley. It runs right down the middle of the state… (hence the clever name)… And I don’t mean the middle of the state the short way. It runs most of the length of the state.
And this is what a lot of this endless valley looks like…
Yes, it is as hot and as dry as it looks like it is…
In the summer, it usually hovers somewhere around 100 degrees farenheit…
Except of course in winter, when at night the temperature dips well below freezing. You also have the Tule fog… (pronounced tooly)… I know I have gone on record as a lover of fog, but this stuff is nasty. It creeps up out of the ground and cuts visibility to about ten or twenty yards. That makes the highway a very dangerous place to be, day or night. Huge multi-car collisions are not unheard of…
You also get these bug storms at different times of the year. There are a variety of insects that show up in the valley for some mysterious reasons of their own. Sometimes you fly through clouds of large, winged monstrosities that splat and crunch against the front of your vehicle until the windshield wipers just end up smearing the wings, guts and legs back and forth in front of you.
Oh, they do grow stuff in the valley. It is full of groves of trees and large farms. The Northern end even has rice paddies. But the Southern end is so dry, that vast stretches of it are as barren as any desert. You get so that you really appreciate the occasional patch of green…
Near the Southern end of the valley, just before you begin to drive up into the mountains that separate the valley from Los Angeles, there is a little town called Buttonwillow. While the youth group was finishing their lunches, I took this picture from the parking lot behind the fast food place we stopped at. I think this picture sums up valley quite well…
(If you can’t read the sign, click on the picture to see it full size)
We crossed over the pass and descended into L.A.
That sounds so exciting, doesn’t it? You most likely conjured up mental images of Hollywood and movie stars, palm covered beaches and Beverly Hills.
I hate to be the one to disabuse you of this notion, but driving through… (or anywhere close to)… L.A., has all the charm of a trip to the DMV… (Department of Motor Vehicles to all of you from other parts of the world)…
Let me amend that by comparing it to a trip to the DMV in a particularly bad part of town, because if you get off at the wrong exit in some parts of Los Angeles, you run the very real risk of being shot…
From the freeway, L.A. is about as inviting as a hive of killer bees…
No, you can’t see Brad Pitt’s house from here… the smog is too thick.
But you will have lots of time to admire this view… because you wont be moving faster than three miles per hour. You are in Los Angeles…
If you look carefully at the picture above you, you can see cars not moving in four directions… and three dimensions… all at the same time.
Pouring My Art Out 
Great images – thanks.
Thank you.
many parts here look much like your desert……….what a suprize hey…..a desert is a desert is a desert no matter where it is.. i guess………..but id still rather be in the desert than the god forsaken cities………….
would that desert be what you call the mojave?……….
No. That is just a dry spot. All of southern Cal. is technically desert. But we have Arizona Nevada and New Mexico, parts of Texas. We got Death Valley. We got it all.
Some deserts have a magestic beauty. I like mesas and colors. not just flat.
we have an area in the northern cape called the richtersveld which is technically part of the kalahari and is one of the most hostile climates on earth…i did military training in a place called upington which is close by and we used to go out into this desert mountain area for field excersizes for weeks at a time……hell its hot (there is a town nearby called hot as hell) and dry and deadly….45..50+ celsius every day……the sun can kill you within 24 hrs…..you quickly learn how to navigate the few water sources……..and walk miles and miles with the sole intention of getting to them…..
That sounds like Death Valley… the name sort of says it all.
one hell of a place to fight a war………..
I would much rather destroy some place nice… beaches, resorts, that sort of thing.
haha….bloody warmonger….
All those desert shots remind me of….well…..here…. LOL
We all have to live somewhere. San Diego is technically a desert.
I was just there a couple of weeks ago, I always forget how hilly it is there compared to the flatness of Arizona. But dang I miss that weather!
It is hilly, but not the lunar landscape of the mesas and painted desert. Just hills covered with dry brush. Except at the beaches, where we have the palm trees.
Ha ha ha…did you pass a limousine transporting pets to the Spa? I think it’s called the “Barkley”…
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“If you look carefully at the picture above you, you can see cars not moving in four directions… and three dimensions… all at the same time.”
Funny!
Thank you so much. I try to be funny now and then.