West Coast - Day 7

Well, it took us a week (which is about what we planned) but we have arrived at the west coast. We are currently in Ukiah, California, after a very intense driving afternoon. We started the day in Virginia City and drove the short way to Carson City (where there is a 1/2 mile section with a 15% grade), which is the capital of Nevada. We spent the morning at the Nevada Railroad Museum, where they have a large number of restored Virginia & Truckee railway cars and engines. (The V & T was the rail line created to service the mines in Virginia City, and it was quite the opulent railroad during the boom times.) I was excited to see the engines - old 4-4-0s and 2-6-0s (including three that still run, but not until tomorrow), but Xander and Evan just wanted to play with the Thomas the Tank Engine play sets in the entranceway. I did convince Xander to come to the back with me, where there was an HO layout setup and if you pressed a button, a train would do a couple of loops around the layout. That kept him occupied for a bit before he had to return to Thomas. It was kind of interesting to learn that almost all the cars from the V & T that survived were cars that were purchased by Hollywood studios for use in various movies. They were then stored for use in later movies until various historical societies purchased them back. Before leaving, I bought the boys some Thomas engines from the museum store, so that they could remember their trip to the museum.


We ate lunch in Carson City and then headed back towards Reno in order to take I-80 into California. I knew from looking at the maps that the road from Reno to Sacramento was mountainous, but I was not prepared for the poor condition of the road, the near constant grade, and the insane amount of traffic. You go mostly downhill (5% and 6% grades) for around 40 miles. Likely because of the snow chains, some parts of the road were so pitted that I thought our car was going to shake apart, until I learned that the left lane was better, because that was the lane where all the cars drove, as the right lane was primarily for trucks. The road was so bad at one point that all traffic on the highway stopped, as everyone slowed down to a crawl to make it over the road. And if all of that wasn't bad enough, the traffic was very heavy in the left lane. The right lane had more than a few gaps in it, but you did not want to go into the right lane, as it was difficult to get back into the left lane when you encountered a slow moving truck during the few times you were going uphill.

Arriving in the Sacramento Valley meant that the hills were over, but that is where the traffic increased. The interstate becomes 3 lanes wide and then eventually 4 lanes (with a fifth carpool lane) as you reach the outskirts of Sacramento, and there were cars everywhere. Due to my mistrust of the GPS (it messed up in Carson City, wanting us to go through the city rather than take the highway around the city), I took the I-80 business loop in Sacramento, as I wanted to skirt the city to get to I-5. Well, the GPS was correct, as the I-80 business loop goes through downtown Sacramento, and if I had followed the GPS, I would have easily arrived at I-5. (I mean there was a HUGE sign covering four lanes that said I-5 straight ahead, but I had to turn...)

So, we ended up driving through the freeways of downtown Sacramento. The GPS found us the correct route and it wasn't too bad except for all the stopped traffic at every spot where new traffic merged into the freeway. We finally ended up on I-5 and started driving north, where I had the opportunity to breathe and glanced at the thermometer in the car just to see that it was 33 degrees. Thank goodness for air conditioning.

Anyway, I-5 is a busy highway as well, so the first rest stop we came to, I stopped at, just so I could catch my breath. The kids ran around in the grass for a bit, but quickly wilted in the heat. We weren't on I-5 for long, before taking a small secondary highway over to highway 101, which is where Ukiah is and is the highway we will be taking up the coast. The small highway annoyed me, as it was just a two lane road through some smaller mountains, and a lot of resort towns, but it was still near constant traffic. I was quite happy to finally arrive and stop driving.

I just realized that this is probably the longest and most boring driving post ever created. Maybe I should just label it "Saskatchewan Kid Drives In Populated Area". One last thing - the cars we passed on the road were very stereotypical Californian cars - Hummers, Corvettes and more Priuses than I have ever seen in one place. At one point five cars passed us, and four were Priuses.