LA sucks, btw. Still. At least we were only there for a few hours.
Anyway, the car is a mid engine sports car, with paddle shifters. Not turbo charged, but plenty fast and fuel efficient, oddly enough. Driven gently it gets 35 mpg at freeway speed, even climbing high mountain passes. I mention this because we drove back from LA up highway 395. Dad is old, but spry. While I'm living here I help with the heavy lifting and cook the meals and remember stuff for him, but he doesn't need much help. This gives me lots of time for my classwork.
We drove north from Van Nuys, where he bought the car, up through the canyon into the desert at Palmdale, then up to Mohave, which is just East of Tehachapi Pass into the San Joaquin Valley, in case you wondered. Tehachapi is where all the SoCal windmills are. We kept going north heading for Owens Lake and the 395 junction north of Olancha. There's water at Olancha, and Crystal Geyser water bottle plant. The road there is in and out of desert, high on an alluvial fan coming down off the Southern Sierras, which are only 6-8000 feet tall in this area.
Inyokern is down below the highway, most of a thousand feet down, south of China Lake bombing test range, a long sweep of dry lake bed. In wetter times it fills with a few inches of water, then dries out again. Without the semi-annual water the playa vanishes under the sand. Remember that about playas. They can't exist without some water to renew them. There's a bunch of passes and it was a hot day, over 100'F and 70 mph with the top up and the A/C on full. We were fine and the engine temp was fine and kept on cruising. There are a bunch of tiny towns you pass on 395 as it climbs up and down along the east side of the Sierras. North of Olancha the mountains get tall and rise from 7000 to nearly 14,000 feet and becomes a wall of granite for the next 130 miles, with no passes through it. We eventually passed through the Inyo County seat in Independence, slowing to 25 mph through town, noting the libraries along the way, and then up through the Big Pine volcanoes just south of town and finally to Bishop, where we stopped for the day. Bishop was 100'F, the hottest I have ever seen it there.
The choices for radio were limited to 4 stations, usually, two of them xtian and one the local college up in Mammoth. On the way up we kept checking for new stations with every pass we crossed, and as we went north the Rape Music stations became fewer and we got Both Kinds Of Music (Country AND Western) and xtian preachers begging people to stop committing suicide and having babies out of wedlock, and sometimes a Mexican station. Other times Led Zepplin. I can only listen to Immigrant Song and That one Zepplin Song That Sounds Like Beating a Cat Against A Fence song so many times. Not that one, the other one. New stations every 20 minutes, basically. There are a lot of passes. The views of the mountains are stunning. It doesn't look real. It's Switzerland without all the hassles and language barrier and the cars are clean. This is why it remains a popular tourism road. Lots of lakes to fish in, and camp sites, and RV parks, and BBQ joints along the road.
Distances between towns up 395 are so great that discussions of public transit are laughable. Without gasoline to get from place to place these towns would die. Switching to Diesel or CNG will keep them going, but lots of people there can't afford new cars or new engines suited to a different fuel. There is a lot of poverty. Since LA took their water, they can't even grow their own food. Thanks LA, you bastards. The Owens Valley has been getting rain from the El Nino monsoons this summer, so there's pasture and cattle are grazing, which is good. We ate BBQ, which was excellent, served by a nice young woman at a Texas BBQ joint next to the park. Bishop is about 10K people, and half are members of the Paiute/Shoshone tribe "rancheria", they've got a casino making money for the tribe, and there's a proper hospital and being relaxed are friendly people. Not stabby ghetto drunks. So the opposite of Oakland or Spokane. It was still 95'F after dinner so we walked around town to help dinner settle. The hotel was NOISY and I barely slept at all. The next morning, after a nasty motel breakfast, we drove north on the increasingly pretty and high elevation 395. It is worth noting that Donner Pass, the high point of Interstate 80 is only 7200 feet. 395 goes over 8300 feet several times, so is a higher road and more stressful on your car. It is also one of the most beautiful roads in America. I would love to see Jeremy Clarkson visit with his new "Not Top Gear" show. Drive that before you dismiss American roads. Its even relatively fast. There were some highway patrol, but not many.
We eventually passed Crowley Lake, in the Long Valley Caldera, and the steaming hot springs vents near Mammoth, including one north of the Airport. Mammoth had a scare in the 80's when major venting of CO2 and rumbling below convinced the USGS to issue an imminent volcano caldera eruption warning, then downgraded to a Watch. This proved to be false, and the real estate crash angered the locals. It crushed their economy for years. The town is dependent on ski tourism, though they now encourage mountain bikes too. I wrote an email to the local USGS volcano observatory geologist years ago and he explained the small quakes are just steam explosions, second boiling, as the magma cools into granite. It isn't going to erupt again, EVER. The source of the magma has moved away and the Pacific Plate underneath is blocking new volcanoes south of Lassen. Eventually Lassen will be cutoff, and Hat Creek and someday Mount Shasta. But someday is probably 10K years.
We drove up to June Lake Loop and drove though the stunning fishing village and resorts situated along the string of lakes that descend 600 feet along a narrow glacially carved valley. One of the meadows was the site of the "cabin" in Oblivion, the scene with the 100 Tom Cruise Clones. The road was pretty, and we fiddled with the paddle shifters, learning some useful tricks. After that was more 395, down to Mono Lake and Lee Vining, then slow traffic behind some dweeb with a minivan till we could pass. More climbing and more high passes and the road gets narrower till we suddenly finish descending Walker River canyon to Garberville and Minden. More built up than I last saw it, and not as classy. They have libraries too. And old people, but seems to be all about the gambling retired people. Can't see those being big on library funding. Don't work at libraries that won't fund, because that's your wages. Fighting over money for books is a big waste of time.
Gassed up at Costco in Carson City, then around to South Lake Tahoe on 50, then over Echo Summit. Note to self: avoid that road in future. Annoying, narrow, slow, morons use it. Few places to pass and the idiots always speed up during the passing lane or won't get over because they never look in the review mirror except to check their eyeliner. The road is an argument to deny women drivers licenses. It was crappy freeway near Pollack Pines and a fast descent into
We've taken it to Tahoe the other route too, and descending old I-40 instead of I-80, which it follows, was so much better. Side roads in the country often are. I wish there were more of them. I don't mind dodging bicycles. Its better than being run down by maniacs texting instead of driving their cars properly. Sigh. Stupid people die, but never fast enough or quietly enough. I like this car of his. It is fun to drive, and makes the right amount of noise. I like it best around 50 mph on a twisty road. That's where it shines.
Dad thanked me for helping drive us home from LA. It would have been pretty hard on his own, and he does love the car. He goes out and looks at it every few hours. We'll keep detailing it until it is right. Bought special clay for this today. They sell decent car detailing stuff at Kmart, can you believe it? He's really happy and I'm glad. Dad needs to be happy about stuff at his age. I hope I live long enough to find satisfaction in things like that again.
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