It only took a day or so before I was completely comfortable in the car. The first few hours were somewhat hairy but I was mostly on the motorway and they are so straight and long you can actually eat an entire snickers without looking once at the road. It got dark before I had even made it out of the rush hour traffic in LA but I battled on and got to the delicate town of Trona by 10pm.
I stayed at the only motel in town, a grim but serviceable little place with two remotes but no TV, strangely. Coming into Trona at night was perfect. The town is a gain borax mine with a giant causeway carved salt lake at its heart. WIth a population of only a few hundred it's area is greatly increased by the insanity of the mines and refinery. Huge, shining, silver pipes large enough to house a lorry burst from the ground like the sand worms in Dune. The whole landscape is Tatooine-desolate and was actually used as the film set for sections of Planet of the Apes.
Its beauty is breathtaking and driving over the mountains down into its salt-scarred valley on hat clear night actually had me telling myself outloud how wonderful it was. Parts of the plant run all night and their yellow hazard lights bounce off the rest of the refinery, as the heat does during the day, to make for a glowing piece of manga dumped in a wasteland.
I ate the next day at the Desert Rose cafe where I ended up staying a couple of hours (popping out occasionally to put more quarters in the washer/dryer up the road) chatting to the owner and the young girl who worked there about living in such a place. She was a real go-getter, the proprietor, having hooked up the only internet access in town and invested in a smoothie maker. They made me a strawberry smoothie to pass the time and served me orange juice in a glass cracked the whole way down. When she told me that the Chinese actually secretly owned 80% of the USA and that the town was better off before the police, when townspeople metered out their own justice, I decided it was time to take my leave and go on the desolate road to death valley.
I'm not going to say much about the drive north because the silence and the desolation are indescribable. Suffice to say I was completely taken aback by how incredible and endless it all was. If there was ever a road to insanity, it probably runs mostly through death valley.
I likewise don't have the words to describe coming over the mountains and into Sequoia national park but if you have ever driven in the alps imagine a scaled down version with (for me anyway) no cars at all. Luckily, actually as it turned out, since at one stage I flew all over the road on some black ice and very nearly sailed off the mountain. Eep.
A good chunk of my journey was freeway about which I have nothing interesting to say. *shrug*.
There was some significantly interesting countryside between Sequoia and the coast and about half way along I left the freeway to drive about 20 miles through orange groves. The road was not much more than a dirt track and I was only a few feet from the oranges all the time which was pretty ace. Thats all there really is to say about that which is a shame because it was actually a really wonderful half hour.
Santa Cruz with its sealions and pelicans was next, but I mentioned that already, and the Winchester Mystery House which I visited after I will allow to remain a mystery. Go and see it - its a thousand times more impactful than Graceland despite being devoid of furniture.
Oh actually I will say one more thing about Santa Cruz : I got there just in time to see the last Monarch leave Natural Bridges park. I wanted to see them all there but actually, this was far more romantic and I'm glad. I was also thrilled to find a small plastic deer in the sand as I left the beaches. I'm not sure why.
Silicon Valley was my last day 'on the road' and after a pretty comfortable night watching 'Gavin and Stacey' (who knew that was so good?) in a business hotel in Cupertino it was time for San Francisco. Or, 'home'.
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