Interstate 80 goes through Donner Pass, one of the higher passes in the Sierras. Freeway traffic lumbers up the grades and then races down the far side at 75 mph.
To the East, quite a ways off, is Reno. In the West, quite a ways off, is Sacramento. The Sierra themselves are around 70 miles wide and hundreds of miles long. They are an effective wall that divides California from the Great Basin states (Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, eastern Oregon, and Utah). The mountains stop the rains from falling once they pass the crest since the descending air warms on the way down, which usually stops precipitation. It's very obvious by the lack of trees as you move East from Donner Pass.
One of the problems with California is that you have to have a speedy freeway capable car to get anywhere in this state. When the Interstate Highway System was built under Eisenhower, fresh from leading WW2's victory over Hitler's Nazi Germany and Tojo's Japan, Imminent Domain took precedence over the previous roads, many of them just cut off in favor of the interstate system being built. American Autobahns, really, based on the Nazi ones. They don't talk about THAT but they should. The new system was fast and let easy motoring become the dominant culture in America, enabling White Flight away from the ruined urban cores full of poor black people for clean white suburbs with onramps and freeways to rush you past those ruins and right to your office. Take that, Liberalism! If you were right, there would be no White Flight. Obviously, you were wrong.
Google Maps of Kingvale, CA including Hwy 40
But there was a catch. The new roads often orphaned the older highways, when new bridges for the freeway system left dead ends for the prior roads, as there was either no funding or no physical ROOM to build a replacement.
Hwy 40 Just Ends Here
In the Sierras, there was an old Donner Pass road called Hwy 40, which goes quite a ways from Sacramento to the East coast, but in the Sierras only in fits and starts. A governor with some sense of responsibility would petition the federal govt for funds to pay for reconnecting these old roads. Why bother? Because Freeways have minimum speeds. People on Bicycles or scooters or slow cars are not allowed there. It would be nice if Hwy 40 were fully connected up such that an ambitious bicyclist or slightly less ambitious Scooterist could climb the pass without ever setting tire (or foot) on the Freeway, just putter along at 20-35 mph on old Highway 40. The Yuba River flows alongside, tittering birds and whistling pines. Its really lovely this time of year. The top of Donner Pass for Highway 40 runs South a mile or two, past a number of ski resorts like Sugar Bowl and a series of alpine meadows and shallow lakes that freeze solid in the winter. These are worth seeing in Fall, because the alders are golden this time of year and its stunning.
A responsible governor would insure that the streams are planted with trout, that the highways connect at a lower speed, that the tourists have reason to come to the mountains and spend their money rather than race past to drop coins in One Armed Bandits in Reno. There are ways to do this without bankrupting the state, and cutting funds to inner city monsters is a good place to start. Think harder about California's real industries: agriculture and tourism. That's what matters, and what needs to be encouraged. Filmmakers might make more movies here if it were still practical in the high country instead of a place you rush through to get somewhere else. Making it practical means returning the slow roads. As Governor, this is one of your jobs. Use the bully pulpit and restore our parks to at least as good as they were in the 1970's. That's not so much to ask.
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