Scenery March 7, 2006
Most people I know who drive to and from the San Francisco Bay Area from here (Orange County and Los Angeles) go up Interstate 5 (”the 5″ to those of us down here), and hate it. Even my wonderful hubby thinks it’s totally boring. I don’t. I love it. I love the fields of crops, the orchards, the changing colors based on season and crop, the mountains in the distance, the wacky-looking power-generating wind mills on the hills when you’re starting to get close to Livermore. I love it all.
I rarely get to take the drive when the orchards are in bloom. It was a total treat seeing them in all their floral glory. Naturally, I didn’t take any pictures on Saturday when the sky was blue and the sun was shining and most of the petals 
were still on the trees. No. Instead, I attempted to take pictures between showers on cloudy, rainy Monday when I was coming home. Did I pull to the side of the road, stop, and take a picture from the safety of the shoulder? No. And this is the result: blurry, blurry, blurry.
The clouds are at the top, then there’s the blurry band of pink which is an orchard in full bloom, then the green is the grasses by the side of the road, the guard rail, more grasses, and the shoulder next to the lane I was in. I strongly discourage you from taking pictures this way…
…Or even this way, facing forward through the windshield. Definitely less blurry, you can sort of even see the trees. But still not recommended.
At least the mountains were far enough away in the next picture so that they didn’t blur as I sped by. I just love these mountains. I was facing east, so this must be the southern end of the Sierra Nevada range. I wanted to head up there, instead of continuing down into southern California. 
But even the southern range has some things going for it. Yesterday it was the little bits of snow and the clouds in the photo below. See? It snows in southern California. You just need to be high enough. And it pretty much has to be winter. These mountains can be found at the top of a stretch of road known as the Grapevine, which is (without traffic) only about half an hour north 
of the city of Los Angeles. I had to go up quite a bit before I got to the Tejon Pass from here. The pass is at about 3,000 feet, with the peaks soaring high above.
I’ll have a knitting update soon, I promise. I got a surprising amount of knitting down over the weekend, in spite of driving 800 miles and going to a wake.
Darla March 7
Actually, the highway’s summit is over 4,100 feet between Gorman and Frasier Park, but Fort Tejon is a little bit lower than that. And I love the drive, even in high summer when so much is dry and brown, but especially in late winter or early spring after a wet winter when so much is in bloom.
Debi March 10
Hey, I’m on the same page as you and find the 5 incredibly boring! I lived in Silicon Valley for five years (with my family in soCal), and then had to attend family court in San Jose for another several years, so it feels like I’ve made the drive a gazillion times. Sometimes I tried a little variety and took the 99 or 101 instead, or went through Tehachapi instead of the Grapevine, and once or twice I took the Pacific Coast Highway just for the scenery.
Debi March 10
Oops, I should say I’m on the same page as your DH.