Life of Brian

Today was a long interesting drive from Barstow to South Lake Tahoe, California. Almost all of it was on US395 through high desert with mountains on both sides. The last 1/3 of the drive consisted of travel through a place called Owens Valley before we climbed into the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The valley road was similar to Interstate, 4 lane divided before turning in 2 lanes, with occasional passing lanes, for the climb over a 7,000 foot pass and another of over 8,000. With a final drop of 2,000 feet to Lake Tahoe.

Owens valley was interesting for several reasons, we stopped at two of them, but were flabbergasted by a third. The City of Los Angeles gets about half of it water from here via 223-mile aqueduct, turning once massive lakes into alkali flats. We did stop and tour Manzanar, the first Japanese American Internment camp during WWII. Around 110,000 Japanese Americans on the west coast were rounded up and sent to 10 such camps, with 10,000 ending up here in the shadow of the Sierras. Our other stop was Mono Lake, a place Mark Twin called, “lifeless, treeless, hideous desert… the loneliest place on earth.” He is kind of right, but the shallow, very salty, lake has a weird beauty to it due to its tufa columns.

We were supposed to spend 4 days in San Diego, but we just couldn’t stand being tied down here for more than two. Don’t get us wrong, there is a lot to do here, but we had crammed our drive time to Seattle into 4 days which would have meant 4 looong days on the road which are not really to our liking.

So we changed a bunch of reservations around and picked up the rental car last night. We rented from National because we get a good discount through Emerson and it is so cool to walk into the Emerald Aisle and pick which ever car you want. Pickings were slim, when we we showed up. Nothing but a couple of Altimas, Sonatas, small SUVs and 4 homely last generation Chevy Impalas, so I picked a Sonata. It is the newer style that looks a bit different, but on the road is very familiar.

We left San Diego on I-8 for about 40 miles before turning north on the smaller state routes that took us into the mountains. Our first stop was the little town of Julian for a slice of apple pie. Donna had read about the place in the California travel guide and it was just the right distance from the start for a break. As usual we were about 11 minutes too early for the opening of the Julian Pie Company, so we stocked up on supplies at the Julian Market including splitting a slice of apple pie from their deli. By the time we were done shopping the real place was now open, so we went over there and Donna had a slice of hot fresh apple pie and I had a slice of pecan.

From there we took a side trip to Borrego Springs to see some metal animals an artist had placed along the road into town (another California Visitor Guide tip) before it was down the mountain into the desert. On Thursday we flew right over the Salton Sea and today we drove right along the shore of it on our way to Joshua Tree National Park.

After the park, once past the town of 29 Palms, the last 80 miles was spent on a two lane road through the desert (and a random dust storm) to end up in the cow town of Barstow. Our Holiday Inn for the night is right next to an Outlet Mall so we did a little shopping which has now increased the amount of goods to such a level that it has outgrown the capacity of our two suitcases. We’ll probably have to mail a box back to SC once we get to Granite Falls.