Day #38—Willits to Bakersfield, CA--Wed., June 29, 2010

Not much to write about. We got up early, a bit of a chore for Sarah as she did not get to bed until after 12:30 last night. She was completing the paperwork for one of her accounts. 

We had coffee and poached eggs on shredded wheat for breakfast. I‘d forgotten how tasty that breakfast is. Then Sarah drove me to Ukiah and the Toyota place again. I paid the garage $76 for inspecting the car (and my telling them what was wrong with it), tested the windows, loaded my backpack and computer into the car, and then we said our goodbyes and I was off, Sarah tailing me. Good thing she did, because I managed to keep our 100% wrong turn score. I exited 101 at Calpella but the Rte 20 exit was just a click farther on. Sarah pulled up beside me at the bottom of the exit ramp and pointed to the correct exit. 

Internet photo

Twenty is one of the few east-west roads between CA 101 and Interstate-5, so I was on it for the fourth time. It‘s about 70-miles between the two roads. What can I say? Route 20 across the mountains and past Upper Lake and Clear Lake is a hilly twist of a road until well past Clear Lake. Then it becomes a long, straight-as-an-arrow stretch with rice fields and nut and fruit groves on either side for several miles before the junction of I-5. Before the terrain flattened out, I enjoyed my favorite brown grassy hills, some wearing neat cornrow vineyards at their crowns. 

Internet photo

One drives the ragged edges of the lake, sometimes at lakeside, but often between the waterside cabins and the hillside houses/cabins, and through small villages where the speed is reduced to 35 or 40 mph. 

It was overcast and misting rain in some places and the clouds hung low on the hilltops. Now I am seeing oleander rather than scotch broom. The oleander is light and dark pink, red, or white. Large shaggy bushes of it separate properties and adorn the center of I-5. Also seeing a lot of Buckeye whose flowers are white spikes as opposed to chokecherry whose spikes droop down. 

Brown hills rise above a fruit orchard (Internet photo)

Zipped down I-5—a 70 mph Interstate—at 75. A lot of traffic and multiple lanes until the other side of Stockton and then the road settles into a four-lane divided highway. The fields on either side and the hills as far as the eye could see were gold with grass; then I was again driving between vast fruit and nut orchards and seeing trucks with their hoppers full of produce. One was carrying carrots, and they stuck comically out of the top of the hopper. 

Talked briefly with Jess en route. We‘ll be getting together with her and Joel in two weeks on our Sierra camping/San Francisco trip. She is very busy right now. She and Joel had just finished painting the interior of his place. 

Got to my hotel in Bakersfield, The Padre, at 3. Was listening to Bernstein conducting the theme from The Magnificent 7 when I drove into town. Appropriate for this cowboy-themed hotel. The parking valet met me at curbside and relieved me of the Prius, which he then parked across the 
street in a large covered garage. The Padre is a large 8-story downtown hotel with a marble lobby and marble baths. The room would be fun for a honeymoon couple as the shower walls are glass and make up one wall of the bedroom. Big sunflower shower head. 

Internet photo

Called Jeff when I got in and am about to go down to one of the restaurants in the hotel for a sandwich. 

There are several restaurants in this hotel and all were "rocking" when I stepped out to get my sandwich. Several different bands, billiards, dancing, roof garden restaurant, etc., thus I was relieved to find a small deli in the corner of the lobby. I bought a coffee and a big turkey/cheese sandwich on wheat. Returned to the room and watched Animal Planet‘s I Shouldn‘t Be Alive for a bit and then hit the sack. One of the programs I watched was about a woman who took off on a cross-country road trip and got lost for 21 days in Grand Canyon—no food, just water. I could imagine this quite well.