California — LA and the Desert

Heading south, we bumped into Los Angeles and our one encounter with it was a disaster. They closed Interstate 5, the freeway we needed to get to LA, for several days! When we laboriously navigatged the detours, an LA motorcycle officer gave us a ticket for turning left! Disgusted, we withdrew from LA and never returned.

North of LA the land is desolate mountains and desert, stretching to the Nevada border and beyond. We poked around and explored some interesting back roads north of Ojai, then headed for Lancaster Victorville, and Barstow. The weather was gorgeous — blue skies, highs in the seventies — and the desert landscape was gorgeous too — in its own way, of course. (See Driver's View photo at the bottom of this page.)

Actually, most of California is desert. Oh, the northern coasts get rain, and the mountains get snow, but everything else receives surprisingly little precipitation. The great central valley that stretches for hundreds of miles up the middle of the state, Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Diego. All technically deserts, by amount of rain received. Irrigation has made California what it is today. Without irrigation, there would be no California fruit or vegetables, no LA, Hollywood or San Diego. Rent Jack Nicholson's great movie "Chinatown" (in which he wears a band-aid across the bridge of his nose) for an exciting story about California water.