Jake's California Exodus

Well, it's taken me a long time to get settled in and ready to write about my trip from LaGrange, IL to San Francisco, CA, but here it is it's full glory with images and videos from my journey.



**First I must apologize for the archaic design of this blog. One of the things I've been meaning to do is design a custom blog, but until then, I need a makeshift container for it.**

DAY 1: A Eulogy for the Midwest

The weather was unusually warm in Illinois as I started out my journey a little later than I had expected. I ended up leaving at noon instead of 8 am. I had initially planned on bringing out 4 full length mirrors with me, but there was absolutely no room for them in the car. In fact, once I had the car initially packed, I got in the drivers seat and found that I couldn't see anything out of my passenger window. I managed to move some stuff around, but the car was still packed to the brim. As a result, I had a bag and CD binder jabbing me in the side the whole time...which caused my right pinky to continually go numb for some reason.

Traffic was beautiful on I-80 going out of Illinois and my first stop was at the World's Largest Truck Stop in Iowa. I paid $2.67/gallon for gas. I was so happy considering gas was around $3.50 still in Illinois. The rest of Iowa was pretty much business as usual. There was some cool windmills that I took a couple pictures of, and I made a detour to go to a winery. Unfortunately, the Winery was closed for the day. As I was making the 15 minute detour to get back on the highway, I found myself screaming, "THIS! IS! DEUTSCH!" along with my music at the barren Iowa landscape. Cabin fever was beginning to set in...
Nebraska looked a little more lively as I passed Omaha and Lincoln. This quickly toured sour though as the rain started to pour. I ended up stopping at a Super 8 for the night in Lexington, Nebraska. It was so cold with the rain pouring. I was glad that I was moving away from the Midwest.

DAY 2: Fear and Loathing in the Fly-Over States

The day started out pleasant with the rain stopping. I decided to pass up the BP in Lexington (I had a BP credit card that got me a 10% rebate on gas purchased at BP locations), because I still had half a tank of gas.

This was a mistake.

My car came to a sputtering stop about 5 miles from a gas station. I thought to myself, "No biggie, you've ran out of gas before in the Hottiemobile. All you have to do is give it a couple of minutes and then start it up again, and it will get you going a couple of miles." This is not true with my Honda Fit. When it's out of gas, it ain't goin' nowhere. Nowhere.

So as I was still laughing at myself for not filling up on gas, I grabbed my phone, gps, glasses, and wallet and hopped out of the car. I stuck out my thumb and cheesed real big at the first car that passed...still laughing at myself. To my surprise he actually stopped. When I noticed it was an elderly man, I decided to take off my rockstar sunglasses (no sense in making him think I was into "funny" business). He generously offered to give me a lift to get some gas at the next gas station. It turned out that he ran his own highway mowing business, so he knew the area really well. We naturally talked about politics and the current political climate (because that's you're supposed to discuss when you meet a total stranger). He ended up taking me there and back from the gas station twice because one gallon of gas wasn't enough to get the Dragon Wagon breathing fire again. Thank goodness for the hospitality of republicans. (PS. He made it a point to let me know that Chicago is not the Midwest....Nebraska is what should be called the midwest. I thought to myself, "Chicago is the Midwest; Nebraska is a Fly-over state.")

Having successfully hitchhiked without any Deliverance reinactments, I continued my journey. The highlights of Nebraska included 75 mph speed limits through construction zones, and a man shooting his rifle at targets less than 20 yds from the highway. This is God's Country.

Wyoming sucked. The state is too damn big. I stopped in the bustling town of Cheyenne around lunch. I somehow got it in my mind that Wyoming should have excellent steak. After one hour of endless searching and 5 location changes, I quickly learned that although you can get served liquor in a steakhouse at noon, they won't give you a steak until after 6 pm. Fuck Wyoming.

**Caution video contains uncensored language**

Six hours later through this turd of a state, I decided to eat dinner. I gave the steakhouse journey one more try. The first restaurant didn't exist. The second one was a meat packaging shop (they couldn't sell me a grill to go with their freshly packed steak). The next place, which really looked promising, WAS CLOSED ON MONDAYS!!!! A local told me that there weren't any other steakhouses in town.

Now I was mad. I backtracked 20 minutes out of my way to try one last place that was actually open. Their menu said "We do not recommend, nor are we responsible for, steaks cooked medium well or well done." Apparently the FDA doesn't exist in Wyoming. So I order the steak medium and received something that was brown on the outside and mooin' in the middle. The steak was okay, nothing to write home about though.
Going back to my car. I found that I had lost my iPod shuffle, which would prevent me from listening to the Shawshank Redemption on audiobook. I spent 20 minutes tearing though my front seat to find that sucker, but still no luck. I was pissed to say the least. So I continued on to Utah. Salt Lake City was beautiful at night. I tried to find a hotel, but everything was outrageously priced because, well, its Salt Lake City.

I decided to go further down the road to a suburb, but apparently those don't exist in Utah. Every exit said "No Services" next to it. The only place I thought look hopeful said "Gas and Lodging." What they meant was, their gas station had a parking lot. Realizing I was screwed, I got gas and started driving through Utah. 2 hours later (it was now 2 am), my GPS picked up a motel in the area. The motel was in Nevada. I had driven through Utah in one sitting without any signs of a hotel.

Nevada was very accommodating. I had the choice of many hotels, including the Red Garter Hotel and Casino. I opted for the $30/night Hotel 6 (which looks like the kind of hotels from "No Country for Old Men").

DAY 3: Nevada, California, and Hope

Nevada was excellent. The weather was warm, but not hot. The landscapes were beautiful. You could gamble everywhere (every gas station had a casino built into it). On top of that, I managed to find my iPod jammed into the front of my driver's-side door. I was so happy to find it, you don't even know.



I ended up stopping in Reno because I really wanted to go gambling there. I first went to an In-n-Burger...and I must say that the rumors are true, it's very delicious. My only compliant is that the place had no less than 12 employees, the menu only has 3 items, and it still took 10 minutes to get my burger. This is why we need more immigrant workers in fast food chains...the white people take too damn long.
Reno was fantastic. I enjoyed my whole experience there.



I made it into California around 6 pm (who knows what time-zone I'm referring to), just as the sun was setting. Eastern California is dangerously hilly. I had to stop and have my car inspected before driving through one of the national parks:

Park Ranger: "Where you coming from?"
Me: "Illinois"

Park Ranger: "Carrying any fruits or veggies?"
Me: "Nope"

Park Ranger: "Any exotic pets?"
Me: "Didn't have room for my man-eating lion, had to leave him at home."
Park Ranger: "I can see that. Have a good trip."

I made it into SF around 9 pm. The Bay Bridge had a nice $4 toll for me to pay as I went into the city. I met up with Frank and spent the rest of the evening looking for a parking garage for my car.

Afterward

All in all, the trip was a great experience. I actually really enjoyed the alone time and opportunity take a drive through the middle of nowhere. The GPS unit was so helpful, I would have been lost a few times without it. Here's the stats that it recorded (with a little bit of an error since I forgot to stop the trip until a few days after I arrived)

Trip Distance: 2202.7 miles
Trip Time (Time that I was in the car): 35hrs 12minutes
Average Speed: 63 mph (I think this would have been higher if I didn't spend so much time looking for a steakhouse in Wyoming)

I did end up finding a reasonably priced garage for my car. I also received a $50 ticket for illegal parking that same day. The weather couldn't be more perfect in San Francisco. The hills are kind of a pain in the butt to walk up and down, but I'm starting to get used to it. I'm glad I made it out here in one piece.

Cheers,
JAKE!


PS I also had my first experience seeing SeaLions recently. Turns out they don't shut up: