Down to the desert

Saturday, September 17 (Day 1) — We are spending the night in Needles, California. Normally I wouldn't start a journal of our two-week excursion across the Southwest by jumping right to the end of the first day, but that's really about all one would need to know of our drive through some of the most desolate stretches of the Golden State — a ten-and-a-half-hour, 530-mile journey that started in our driveway in Oakley and concluded at the far eastern end of the Mojave desert just a couple dozen miles from the Arizona border. But because this is a travelogue and you have read this far, there is some reasonable expectation that I will share with you the details of our travels. Well, fasten your seatbelt and bring along a good book or your well-stocked MP3 player because it's going to be a long ride.

Why Needles? Because it is a waypoint to better things. At least we hope. We aren't exactly sure what to expect as we have never before taken this trip that will lead us into New Mexico and western Texas. We started talking about doing this last year while in the midst of our New Orleans vacation. Maybe it was the thrill of actually completing that ambitious two-week journey that inspired us. Perhaps it was flying over it all and looking out the window of our Continental Airlines flight to see the plateaus and ravines carved into the Arizona landscape. Whatever the genesis of this vacation was has long been forgotten in the intervening months. And today at various times we found ourselves wondering why we are doing this when we could be at home relaxing, avoiding astronomical gas prices, enjoying the comfort of our living room sofa with the computers and the TV and the refrigerator close at hand. The answer, as always, was that sometimes you just need to get away from it all, and heading to the desert was at least as good as the mountains or the ocean. So here we are. For two weeks. Now shut up and drive.

Our day began with the alarm buzzer at 6 a.m. It was up and into the shower so we could be out the door no later than 7. At least that was the plan. We had mostly packed everything into my car the night before and done all the pre-vacation preparations — checking locks and lights, putting down food for the cats, rounding up stray articles of necessary clothing, etc. We kissed the kitties farewell and were out of the driveway by 7:25. A fashionably late start. We made our way down Highway 4 to Interstate 205 near Tracy, which led us over to I-5.

Anticipating the long trip before us, we had my car serviced the week before and rotated the tires, which weren't in the best shape to begin with. Since the rotation they have developed a serious vibration at higher speeds. It's nothing an alignment and new tires won't cure, but not something we had planned to do now. The thought was that we could live with it for a few days and to just take things slow. What we learned once we hit the interstates is two things: first, there is no taking it slow unless you want to be run over from behind by a semi; second, this baby's gonna be a handful. Gripping the steering wheel is like trying to drive with one of those weight-loss contraptions they had back in the '50s, the ones where you strapped a big belt around your middle and flipped a switch so that they'd vibrate your flab around your gut and theoretically you were supposed to lose weight. Any weight loss that occurs from our drive will be as a result of the sweat pouring off my forehead as I try to keep it between the lines at 70 mph. With some practice I discovered that I could reduce the vibration by staying at 62 mph or less. So I spent a lot of time ducking into the slow lane and letting traffic by until I was forced out of the pocket by slower moving vehicles. It seems that there are only two types of truckers: those who slog along at 50 or less, even on flat runs of freeway, and those who drive 80 regardless of what they're carrying. I definitely prefer the former. Drivers of passenger cars are another matter. On the interstate most of them want to go faster. It doesn't matter that they're all going too fast as it is. And yes, I'm guilty of that sometimes. It's easy to get swept up by the crowd. So when I found myself cruising along at 85 at one point, it was with great relief that I was able to plant myself back in the slow lane with the 50 mph big rigs.

I-5 is everything it's billed as, which is a fast route along California's backbone. You can shave an hour or two off your journey by sticking to it. But no one has ever said anything about it being scenic, and don't expect me to be the first. I-5 through the Central Valley is dull, dull, dull. There are some great views of the California Aqueduct that steals our water from the Delta to irrigate cropland and slake the thirst of Los Angelenos. If you get your thrills by playing "name that fruit tree," you can spend endless miles looking at peaches, apricots, almonds and grapes. Occasionally you will be treated to a gust of methane-laden wind from a nearby dairy, or buzzed by a cropduster making a low pass over the freeway. Piles of stuff are burning everywhere you look, and a constant haze hangs over farm towns whose names you've never heard of and are best forgotten once they are in your rear view mirror. There are some glorified truck stops along the way — like Westley — that have had the misfortune of having towns spring up around them. What a shock it was to gaze east from I-5 as we cruised along the Salinas mountains and see giant fountains springing up from some artificial lake surrounded by executive-style homes. Where did those come from, and who the heck is living there? There's no work outside of farm labor, and you know those aren't the folks buying these cracker boxes. It's the Bay Area transplants who can't afford to live in Silicon Valley and are making hellacious treks out Highway 152 to Gilroy and points north. How do people do it? Why do they do it? And don't try to tell me it's all for a piece of the American Dream, because living out here can't be much of a dream. Too far away from everything. Too much traffic to get to where you need to be. Too boring.

At least we aren't committed to staying here. We need only press the gas pedal a little further to the floor and dodge some more traffic to move us down the line. We made good time from home, stopping just once for a bathroom break at a rest area south of the I-5/580 split, and reaching Bakersfield at straight-up noon. That had been my goal from the beginning and I'd feared we would miss it because I — yes, I blame myself — procrastinated in getting us out the door on time. I decided to go clean-shaven for this trip, just as I did last year. Mowing through a thick beard, regardless of the method, takes time. The results were mediocre at best, so this will likely be the last time for another decade or so that I do more than give my graying whiskers a buzz trim. It didn't help matters that once I'd shaved I realized my hair looked entirely too long. Wanting to avoid the heavy metal rocker look, I took the scissors to the stray locks around my neckline and gave a couple of quick trims. Of course I left one side longer than the other, so things were raggedly uneven until I took another shot at it while we were at the rest area. I'll never be a qualified cosmetologist.

By the time we reached Bakersfield we were getting hungry for lunch. The muffins Roni had purchased from the grocery store to get us started had been consumed three hours earlier. It was just luck that we stumbled upon a city park (whose name now escapes me because I wasn't paying close attention to the sign) where we found a picnic table near a playground to consume our meal of mini sandwich rolls and prepared salami and cheese rounds. Ben had some chicken strips that he didn't finish because he was more interested in playing on the swings than in eating. It was good to be able to stop and stretch our legs for a while, because we still had almost 300 miles of driving still ahead of us. (Remember, I did advise you to bring along something good to entertain yourself!) All my elation at having covered the first leg of the drive so quickly faded a bit when we realized how much more ground would have to be covered. I'd battled the car tires every one of the first 230 miles and was starting to feel it in my arms.

We returned to Highway 58 just before 1 p.m. and soon found ourselves crawling up the foothills into the Tehachapis. Just like that we were leaving the San Joaquin Valley behind. No subtle transitions here. One moment you're passing orange groves and the next you're surrounded on either side by mountains with nothing but the railroad tracks somewhere to the north for company. This is familiar terrain to us because it was here seven years ago that we brought Ben for his fourth birthday to visit the Tehachapi Loop. It seems a lot longer ago than that now. He's much more interested in Megaman than intermodals these days. The trains, tracks and tunnels are just another part of the scenery.

We were cruising along uphill behind a couple of slower trucks, setting up to pass them, when all of a sudden everyone slammed on their brakes. OK, what's all this about? We creep along, merging into a single lane as we come upon an accident scene. Someone in an SUV has managed to roll over on the median and the fire and paramedic crews are swarming over the wreck. Some witnesses and others have stopped to help. It looks from the way the rescue operations are going that the guy's in pretty bad shape. Will he make it? Guess we'll never know because the firefighters are ushering through all of us rubberneckers and we won't be around here for tomorrow's paper or film at 11. I don't like to prejudge, but I can only assume it was someone driving too fast and trying something stupid that resulted in what we saw. Then I also think it could have been some guy with tires like mine who had a blowout and simply lost control. These things happen. I vow to check on the condition of my tires at every stop. I don't know if I'll be able to complete the trip with the vibration this bad. I may be forced to find a tread shop somewhere in Tucson or El Paso and get this corrected.

We lose little time at the accident site and are quickly through Tehachapi and on into Mojave. I feel sorry that we are rushing through all of this because it is one of my favorite areas in the entire state. Seems like all my loves are rolled into one here. They've got trains, which is what first drew us here in 1998. They've got wind farms — lots of them. Tehachapi bills itself as the wind capital of the world and that might not be idle talk. As you descend into Mojave you pass hills dotted with joshua trees. The cactus-like bushes with their spiny needles are unique to this region and make for some awesome scenery. Then in Mojave you find the Mojave Airport with its acres of mothballed jet planes. We're talking big commercial passenger jets in various states of upkeep, from every air carrier you might think of. It's sort of like cruising down Main Street in your home town and passing the used car lot, except here they don't attach balloons or sale stickers in the windows. Edwards Air Base is a few miles to the east, where the space shuttles land on occasion.

We were starting to get low on gas by the time we reached Mojave, and Ben was in need of the facilities, so I headed into town and found an Arco station where the price was a mere $3.02 per gallon for regular unleaded. That is the most I have ever spent for gas. It's been out of sight everywhere since Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast last month, but I thought we might catch a break once we got away from the Bay Area. Not so. It was only $2.90 per gallon at the Arco a few blocks from our house when I filled up Thursday night. Sigh. I pulled up to the pump and once we opened the doors we were nearly blown over from the gusting wind. No wonder they built all those wind farms up there in the Tehachapis. Roni was trying to clean some of the trash out of the car and it was literally blowing out the door, along with stuff we didn't want blowing out the door. We rescued what we needed. The bathroom in the mini mart was merely adequate, but they did have an excellent postcard rack, and of course I couldn't resist. I found images of all my favorite Mojave/Tehachapi sights. A worthwhile stop.

Now packed with fuel, we were good to go for the remainder of our drive into Needles. We continued east on Highway 58 through Barstow, merging onto I-40 for the remaining 180 miles. There are many deserts in the Mojave desert. The farther east we go the more the landscape begins to resemble the mesas and columnar rock formations that characterize Arizona. There are some different varieties of plants that resemble the joshua trees, but they are stubbier and less spiny. They look more like cactus, but they have brownish gray tufts of leaves on their tops. Then there are several fields of ancient black lava, now decomposing along the freeway. We see lots of signs pointing to "Historic Route 66," just about every exit we pass. The famous road was superseded by I-40 through these parts. I understand that parts of it no longer exist, but apparently you can still drive segments of it. I dearly wanted to take one of those side roads, but we'll have several opportunities between now and the end of our journey, and I wasn't entirely sure that if I got off the interstate I’d be able to easily find my way back to it. It was still mid-afternoon, but I didn't want to take a detour that would put us into Needles after dark. I'm just funny that way.

We have been keeping ourselves entertained with music, books and video games. Ben got a new Gameboy game (Code Name: Kids Next Door) that he has spent most of the drive playing. He has also been reading one of the books in the "That's So Raven" series that he enjoys watching on the Disney Channel. Roni has been trying to read a romance novel when Ben and I aren't bugging her with questions. I've been listening to an MP3 disk of country music hits that I burned late last night before going to bed. Perhaps it is a happy coincidence that there is just enough music on it to get us from I-5 near Tracy to the Needles city limit, where the disk finally played out. We made one more unscheduled stop at a rest area some 30 miles outside of town, so we were a little later getting to our destination than planned. Still 6 p.m. isn't bad. We check in to Room 123 at the Days Inn, which is one of the few big name chains in town we can see off the freeway. While hunting for a place to stay we passed a gas station where the price was listed at $3.87 a gallon. Now I'm glad I can hold out until we get close to Phoenix.

The weather for our drive couldn't have been better. Most of the way we were in the upper 70s to low 80s. Once we hit the eastern desert we were between 88 and 92 degrees until we reached Needles, which topped the day at 96. We went to dinner at the Denny's restaurant across from the hotel and it was a pleasant walk in the warm night air. I can only guess that it was probably a bit over 100 degrees here earlier in the day. But at least it is a dry heat.

We're all pretty tired tonight. Ben held up very well, but he cried himself to sleep because he misses his cat, Eevee. He's snoozing peacefully now. I napped for an hour or so before waking up around 10 p.m. to compose this entry (it's 12:30 now). Roni went out just after I got up. I can really feel the muscle fatigue in my arms and legs. Probably from being cramped up in the car for all those hours and miles. If I had it to do again I wouldn't tackle this much ground in a single day. It would have been great to stop in Tehachapi and then take a day to explore the backroads we flew by on our way to get here. But the intention never was to do sightseeing today. We wanted to haul butt as far as possible to get through all the familiar terrain so we can start Sunday's drive close to Arizona. At 530 miles, this was the longest day's drive planned for this trip. Anything from this point on should seem like a cakewalk.