bakersfield
May. 31st, 2005 12:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
smileswhfI spent the first part of this weekend camping near Lake Isabella. The property we were on is owned by friends of a friend. The owners, john and becca are building cabins and facilities on the property to turn it into a place for folks to enjoy healing retreats.
Lake Isabella is located in the Kern river valley and is part of the Sequoia National Forest in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. California has more than 2 mountain ranges but is defined largely by the coastal range, which runs in the 20-30 miles along the coast and is formed by the action of one tectonic plate folding under another, and the Sierra Nevadas on the eastern side of the state. The Sierra Nevadas is home to the highest peak in the lower 48 states and has some amazing hiking and scenery. The central valley is an alluvial plain about 50 miles wide and 450 miles long that runs between these 2 mountain ranges and is one of the most productive farming areas in the world. Most people hate the drive through the central valley. It's hot, dusty, prone to high winds, and the scenery is mile after mile of crops. But I've always like the drive and it's one that I've made hundreds of times.
My grandparents moved to northern california when I was 4. My mom would pack my brothers and me into her old chevy 3 or 4 times a year and make the trek to grandma's house, north of San Francisco. Back then it was considered good time to make the drive in 8.5 hours. To get into the central valley, you have to first get out of LA, a drive that involves crossing the transverse ranges, a small group of mountains that, contrary to the general inclination of mountains to run north-south, run east-west just for the hell of it. Most of us locals call the road the grape vine. On a hot day it was guaranteed that my mom's chevy would over-heat and she would be limping the car along to one of the two faucets in the 40 mile stretch. Once you descend into the valley, it is mile after mile of crops framed by rolling hills the color of brown silk in the hot sun.
To get to sequoia at the southern end of the sierra nevadas, you head up the central valley to bakersfield and hang a right. California is still "new" enough that most towns retain the look of when they were first built. San Rafael in marin county was built in the 50's and has been forever immortalized as the town in American Graffiti. Bakersfield saw it's first real wave of building in the 70's. Driving the highway through the edge of town, it is easy to look past the newer tract houses and see the california of 30 years ago. You don't have to go through bakersfield to get to sequoia, but this was the route that my friends decided to take. On the way back, I contemplated taking the shorter, more rural route of Comanche Rd. through Arvin. It's a drive I like very much because many of the farms have help-yourself fruit stands where you put $2 in the lock box and take a bag of whatever (usually plums or pluots). Having been that route before I knew 2 things to be true: there were no bathrooms and no starbucks. The need for either one of those would not have stopped me, but both together pretty much dictated that I return the way I had come.
Bakersfield isn't a pit. It's really not. It's merely devoid of interest in that non-descript 70's kind of a way. Every kind of fast food can be had but it's hard to find a decent restaurant. Likewise, you can find the big outlet stores (best buy and costco) but not so much the higher end department stores. It's a hard working town.
Pete, my 19-yr-old toyota, has some overheating problems now. I planned for that and brought a few gallons of water along just in case. So I'm at starbucks, newly relieved and watered and decide to water pete, too. The temperature guage didn't indicate a need, but it's a long drive and I figure better safe than sorry. A nice guy in his 20's came over to make sure everything was ok when he saw me watering my car. Once he knew that I was ok, he offered to let me in on a home business opportunity--he had an informative dvd right in his car. After he left I looked at myself the way an outsider might with my beat up old car, feet caked in dirt and my hair unwashed and dishelveled. No wonder people think I'm poor.
I can't begin to count how many times I've been over the grapevine, yet every time calls back to those trips that I can barely remember. And there are things that stand out in my mind. I remember my mother and my grandmother thanking the PTB for the new road because the old route was so bad. I remember that distinctly yet I only remember the road as it currently stands-- 4-5 lanes of interstate and traffic that frequently tops 90 mph. When I got home I looked it up. I had known that the name comes not from the winding nature of the road but from the cimarron grapes that naturally grow there. Early wagon trains had to hack their way through the grapes with a machete. It turns out that this range was the point at which california was almost cut in two because of the difficulty of building the first road across. That road is actually named the Ridge Route and was completed in 1915. The grapevine is only a 6.5 mile section of the road. In 1947 it was converted into a 4 lane expressway and in 1970 they finished putting I-5 through with the 8 lanes that it has today. And something else I didn't know: in places where it looks like wild ivy is growing, it is actually the cimarron grapevines. The internet has routes where you can tour what remains of the original 1915 road. I wish I had known that before I was leaving.
Lake Isabella is located in the Kern river valley and is part of the Sequoia National Forest in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. California has more than 2 mountain ranges but is defined largely by the coastal range, which runs in the 20-30 miles along the coast and is formed by the action of one tectonic plate folding under another, and the Sierra Nevadas on the eastern side of the state. The Sierra Nevadas is home to the highest peak in the lower 48 states and has some amazing hiking and scenery. The central valley is an alluvial plain about 50 miles wide and 450 miles long that runs between these 2 mountain ranges and is one of the most productive farming areas in the world. Most people hate the drive through the central valley. It's hot, dusty, prone to high winds, and the scenery is mile after mile of crops. But I've always like the drive and it's one that I've made hundreds of times.
My grandparents moved to northern california when I was 4. My mom would pack my brothers and me into her old chevy 3 or 4 times a year and make the trek to grandma's house, north of San Francisco. Back then it was considered good time to make the drive in 8.5 hours. To get into the central valley, you have to first get out of LA, a drive that involves crossing the transverse ranges, a small group of mountains that, contrary to the general inclination of mountains to run north-south, run east-west just for the hell of it. Most of us locals call the road the grape vine. On a hot day it was guaranteed that my mom's chevy would over-heat and she would be limping the car along to one of the two faucets in the 40 mile stretch. Once you descend into the valley, it is mile after mile of crops framed by rolling hills the color of brown silk in the hot sun.
To get to sequoia at the southern end of the sierra nevadas, you head up the central valley to bakersfield and hang a right. California is still "new" enough that most towns retain the look of when they were first built. San Rafael in marin county was built in the 50's and has been forever immortalized as the town in American Graffiti. Bakersfield saw it's first real wave of building in the 70's. Driving the highway through the edge of town, it is easy to look past the newer tract houses and see the california of 30 years ago. You don't have to go through bakersfield to get to sequoia, but this was the route that my friends decided to take. On the way back, I contemplated taking the shorter, more rural route of Comanche Rd. through Arvin. It's a drive I like very much because many of the farms have help-yourself fruit stands where you put $2 in the lock box and take a bag of whatever (usually plums or pluots). Having been that route before I knew 2 things to be true: there were no bathrooms and no starbucks. The need for either one of those would not have stopped me, but both together pretty much dictated that I return the way I had come.
Bakersfield isn't a pit. It's really not. It's merely devoid of interest in that non-descript 70's kind of a way. Every kind of fast food can be had but it's hard to find a decent restaurant. Likewise, you can find the big outlet stores (best buy and costco) but not so much the higher end department stores. It's a hard working town.
Pete, my 19-yr-old toyota, has some overheating problems now. I planned for that and brought a few gallons of water along just in case. So I'm at starbucks, newly relieved and watered and decide to water pete, too. The temperature guage didn't indicate a need, but it's a long drive and I figure better safe than sorry. A nice guy in his 20's came over to make sure everything was ok when he saw me watering my car. Once he knew that I was ok, he offered to let me in on a home business opportunity--he had an informative dvd right in his car. After he left I looked at myself the way an outsider might with my beat up old car, feet caked in dirt and my hair unwashed and dishelveled. No wonder people think I'm poor.
I can't begin to count how many times I've been over the grapevine, yet every time calls back to those trips that I can barely remember. And there are things that stand out in my mind. I remember my mother and my grandmother thanking the PTB for the new road because the old route was so bad. I remember that distinctly yet I only remember the road as it currently stands-- 4-5 lanes of interstate and traffic that frequently tops 90 mph. When I got home I looked it up. I had known that the name comes not from the winding nature of the road but from the cimarron grapes that naturally grow there. Early wagon trains had to hack their way through the grapes with a machete. It turns out that this range was the point at which california was almost cut in two because of the difficulty of building the first road across. That road is actually named the Ridge Route and was completed in 1915. The grapevine is only a 6.5 mile section of the road. In 1947 it was converted into a 4 lane expressway and in 1970 they finished putting I-5 through with the 8 lanes that it has today. And something else I didn't know: in places where it looks like wild ivy is growing, it is actually the cimarron grapevines. The internet has routes where you can tour what remains of the original 1915 road. I wish I had known that before I was leaving.
