Last week my husband and I drove from our home in the East Bay to the Furnace Creek Inn in Death Valley. My iPhone map says it’s about eight hours. We needed nine hours with stops.

Our route took us down the 5, or I-5. I like to call it “the five,” which is what Southern Californians call it. My husband detests this. He advocates endlessly for calling it just “5,” which sounds barren and forlorn, or “I-5,” which is fine but not as regal as “the five.”

I-5 is the lifeline that connects the SF Bay area with LA. People in both cities have a love-hate relationship with the drive. You can drive fast, but the road is only two lanes, and trucks usually clog the route, making it necessary to pass them over and over. The trip can feel endless. Audible books, Sirius XM, and caffeinated beverages help.

Some people think that driving down the Central Valley is boring. I admit it’s flat and parts can get tedious, but I find it interesting, maybe because it’s farmland. My grandparents on both sides were farmers, so as a kid I grew up around farms.

I enjoy looking at the rolling green pastures clotted with grazing black cattle and woolly white sheep, the neat rows of fruit and nut trees disappearing into the distance, and the glistening water in the wide irrigation canals that curve and wind like natural rivers. This time of year fruit and nut trees are bursting into bloom with pink and white flowers festooned along the branches.

As we cruise south, the Diablo Range rises to our right, close enough to touch. Way off at the hazy horizon in the east stands the Sierra Nevada, pinned against the sky like a cutout fake mountain range.

Today there is smog in the east. It looks just like the smog that Los Angeles used to be famous for, but this is different.  It’s agricultural smog, a toxic mix of dust and diesel exhaust that makes the Central Valley an unhealthy place to live.

We spot the sign for Coalinga and speculate about the origin of the town name Coalinga. I advocate “cow tongue,” but Google cannot confirm this without a cell signal. It’s just as well because road trips are all about wild speculation and silly jokes. Why let facts get in the way?

Huge highway signs remind us of the perpetual California water wars: “Stop the Congress-created dust bowl” and “Dams or trains. Build water storage now.”

We stop at an a unique rest stop that features two tall barn-like buildings and in between is a shaded plaza with iron park benches. I brace myself against a bench to do some stretches for my glutes and hip flexors. Red-wing blackbirds trill in the tall grasses. Then it’s back into our Ford Escape, and my husband’s turn to drive.

Now we start to see trucks with open containers holding oranges and flat-bed trucks piled with large cubes of fresh green hay. Orange trees heavily loaded with fruit the size of baseballs start appearing, along with the occasional oil derrick dipping into the ground in a vacant field. These are signs that we’re almost at the end of the valley.

It’s time for lunch. At the turnoff for Bakersfield, Route 58 East, we pause at the stop sign, and I check Yelp and Around Me. I find a highly rated restaurant serving pupusas, but it’s in the direction of Buttonwillow. We opt for one of the two In and Out Burgers in Bakersfield and head east.


BAKERSFIELD
Driving through Bakersfield is an exercise in patience. After rocketing down the 5 at 80mph on cruise control, passing giant trucks with aplomb, I find that the nonstop traffic lights offend my sensibility. It turns out that Bakersfield is really, really big along its east-west axis. It takes 30 minutes to cross it. Finally we reach our culinary destination: In and Out.

The wait in line is the usual 15 minutes, so it’s not exactly fast food, but it’s definitely car food, and it’s delicious. Worth waiting in line for, worth going on a road trip to eat.

My husband eats his personal favorite–cheeseburger with sautéed onions and french fries–with one hand and drives with his other hand on the wheel. We leave Bakersfield in our rearview mirror and follow 58 east toward the Tehachiipi Pass. More oil derricks keep us company as we cruise across the flatlands.

To get to Death Valley from the East Bay, you have to conquer the Sierra Nevada. In winter the mountain passes like Tioga and Ebbets are typically closed by snow. That’s why our route takes us way south to Bakersfield, where we leave the San Joaquin Valley and ascend the Tehachapi Pass, elevation 4031 feet.

The pass lets us cross the Tehachipi Mountains, which I think of as the last gasp of the Sierra Nevada, and finally enter the Mojave Desert. The climb up is relatively gentle and so is the descent. The town of Tehachapi sits right at the summit. Hanging on the edge of the mountain, the town looks inviting, but we don’t stop. Death Valley is still hours away.