Road Trip. Part 2: The long drive back (Washington to Las Vegas; 1600 miles in 42 hours)
On Monday morning, I woke up in Kirkland, Washington and drove out around 7am. A bit after midnight on Wednesday morning, my car was back in my garage in Las Vegas.
It was about 1600 miles in about 42 hours. My solo drive home was broken into two parts. A 21 hour drive from Kirkland, WA to Santa Clara, CA. Then a few hours of rest followed by a 13 hour drive from Santa Clara back to Las Vegas.
DAY 1. Washington to California:
I didn’t originally plan on having the first half of my trip taking 21 hours. My initial route was to get to the coast for a bit, stopping in Tillamook in Oregon (I heard the cheese factory there was worth visiting) and then getting back on the I5 and driving south to California. It would have taken about 13 or 14 hours.
But as I drove down the Oregon coast, I saw some of the most beautiful sights I’d ever witnessed in my entire life. It wasn’t hard for me to decide that I’d stay along the 101, all the way to San Francisco.
Everyone needs to see what I saw that day. It was overcast and misty that morning when I left Washington. It was like a Bob Ross paintings (you know, the white dude with the huge afro). The skies cleared up by noon when I reached the Oregon coast. Driving south meant I was right along the coast line so I got to see everything right in front of me.
The sun began to set behind me as I entered California. By the time I reached Redwood National Park, it was starting to get dark. I ended up driving through a lot of it in the pitch black of night. Toward the end of my drive, I passed by the San Francisco skyline and arrived at a friend’s place in Santa Clara around 4 in the morning (sorry about that Sherry!), where I slept for a few hours before heading out again at noon.
I had been driving for 21 hours, with a few stops along the way at random beaches when I felt so inspired. Various energy drinks kept me going through the last few hours.
Day 2:
I always wanted to see Big Sur. And so on Tuesday, I did.
From Santa Clara, I headed to Monterey and drove around Carmel for a while before heading south along California 1. Again, beautiful coastline, but with a slightly different feel from what I saw in Oregon. The drive along Big Sur reminded me of the road to Hana in Maui, but with more gift shops and with less palm trees (just as many tourists, though).
Heading south, I thought I was clever and figured that I’d save some time by turning east before getting to Los Angeles. I ended up turning around Morro Bay and went down a road called Hwy58. It was on that road that I experienced the scariest 90 minutes of my life.
Okay so I’m from Hawaii. I haven’t been driving around the mainland for too long, but I figure that when a road is called a “Highway”, it’s going to have a bunch of people and be surrounded by gas stations every few miles. So I jump on something called Highway 58 with a half tank of gas. About 15 minutes in, I notice that I haven’t passed any cars and that I’m surrounded by nothing but hills and grass. Also, my cell phone doesn’t work out there.
I really got scared when I realized I had just crossed a point where I didn’t have enough fuel to go back the way I came. The GPS told me that there was a gas station in about 40 miles though, so I kept on the twisting and hilly road.
With the needle near E, I reached what the GPS said was a Chevron gas station. It was a Chevron oil refinery (Oh yeah I was surrounded by oil derricks there, too). That’s about when I started panicking a little more.
To my relief, I did end up finding a gas station. It was a weird gas station in the middle of no where. No little snack mart, no air/water pump, not even anyone staffing it. It was just a bunch of pumps with a single credit card reader in the middle, and a payphone off to the side. And that day, it was the most awesome gas station I’d seen in my entire life.
I just spent about 15 minutes trying to find it on google maps. Here it is:
I know it looks like there’s stuff around it, and it also looks like it’s near a small town. But I swear to God, when I was there… I really thought I was going to run out of fuel, die trying to walk somewhere with cell reception, and then get eaten by vultures. (I was a little scared, in other words).
All’s well that ends well though. I refueled, continued East, hit a bunch of small towns, and made my way back to Vegas.
It was only after I got back home to Vegas that I realized the last time I had food in my stomach was over 50 hours ago, when I had dinner in Seattle with Doug and Cat on Sunday night. During the drive over, the only thing I ate was a cupcake that Cat had baked, and half of a ziploc bag of chex mix that they also gave me, which I had been slowly snacking on during the way over.
So I ate me a huge loco moco, and passed out for the night.
Like I said, during the past two weeks the car put on 4356 miles. Pretty epic stuff. I got an oil change in Vegas right before heading out, and was due for another one right around the time I passed through Astoria, Oregon on the way back. The bumper is covered with bugs now from four different states and a different country. Hell, even the antenna ball caught some bugs, and so did the Canadian flag I have on my antenna (that I picked up in Vancouver and flew all the way back here).
The old Hyundai’s been good to me. Sometimes I still can’t believe I picked it up for less than what I sold my motorcycle for.
It’s been an interesting week. I was picking raspberries in Washington on Sunday, driving down the Oregon coast on Monday, the California coast on Tuesday, and then yesterday I was eating seafood buffet in the middle of the desert and playing slot machines again. Home sweet home.
