SoCal Road Trip 2006

Wednesday morning we woke up at 6, had breakfast and hit the road. We could see stormy weather hanging around as we left, but things were clear ahead of us. We drove South towards Needles and then turned onto Route 66 once we crossed the California border. Route 66 runs parallel to one of the main BNSF mainlines through the desert, crossing over it a couple of times. The rails from Needles to Bakersfield are some of the most heavily traveled lines in the country, with 70+ trains per day.

We started to see trains almost immediately in both directions. The weather was being really cooperative with blue skies mixed with white puffy clouds and dark blue/gray rain clouds for backdrops. We made our way towards Amboy, stopping along the way to snap pictures. Just before Amboy we turned and headed a couple of miles to Cadiz where the road crossed over the tracks. We hopped out and waited for some trains, watching a huge storm approaching from the West. We got some great pictures and then jumped into the car as the downpour began.

As we continued West we passed through the storm and the skies cleared again. We pretty much drove around and in between a bunch of storms all day, but only experienced a small amount of rain ourselves. There were lots of trains to see, and we saw two of the ones going West a few times as we'd leap frog past them and then stop to take pictures.

Around 2pm we arrived in Barstow, and after a quick drive to the hill overlooking the town rail yard for a picture, we went looking for lunch. We quickly left the first place we walked into, Bun Boy, because it smelled nasty. We drove back through town and had lunch at a Quizmo's in Barstow Station, a bizarre mini-mall, sort of like an indoor flea market, with fast food restaurants mixed in.

Then we continued East, figuring we'd stop in Mojave or Tehachapi for the night. There were lots of storm clouds around with the most awesome colors; white, deep blue, dark gray and everything in between. An amazingly scenic drive! As we approached Mojave we realized that we were almost out of gas... oops. Then, as we looked for a gas station the traffic came to a stand still. All of the traffic was being diverted off the highway towards Mojave. Turns out that the storms had dumped snow in the mountains ahead and there had been so many accidents that the CHP had closed the road. We headed into Mojave to get gas and asked about alternate routes; it turned out that all the roads West were closed.

We decided to stay in Mojave for the night, so we got a room at the Best Western. The railroad tracks were right across the street, so as the sun was setting we took some more pictures, and then went to Denny's for dinner. They were totally slammed with people stuck because of the storm; our chicken sandwiches took almost an hour! After we finally ate we headed back to the room to watch the latest episode of Lost (could it all really just be in Hurley's head?)