Pacific

12 May 1999, Wednesday
Started: Barstow, California
Reached: Mountain View, California
Miles: 427 (3744 cumulative)
Route:
	California - Bakersfield, San Jose
Highways: I15, C58, I5, I580, I680, I880 

Even at 8:00am, when we started, the morning was already warm. We wanted
to get out of Mojave desert before noon to escape the heat. We left I15
and took CA58 to Bakersfield. There were lots of trucks even on this state
highway.

Soon after we left Barstow, we entered the Mojave desert. There is even a
town named Mojave. Here we saw lots of windmills placed on a hillside.
There must be a few hundred of them!  Along the road there were
"Rockslide" warnings. I had heard of mudslides, but rockslides was
something new for me. 

We went through a mountain pass at 4064 ft in the Sierra Nevada
mountains. After this pass, the road went downhill all the way to
sea-level. As we got out of the mountains, we were greeted by large fields
on either sides of the road, with grove plantations in-between. These
looked like orange groves. 

From Bakersfield, we took I5, which is on the east side of the mountains.
There are no towns along the road, and all we could see were huge farms.
As we neared San Francisco, we again saw a lot of windmills. There were
lots of gentle hills here, covered in small grass. After going through
some heavy traffic near San Jose, we reached Mountain View, CA. 

We were quite early, and Srinivas's sister or brother-in-law were not
expected home that soon. So Srinivas showed me his office and few other
buildings in San Jose. It seems every software company is present here! 

Fortunately, Srinivas's sister, Ranjani, came home early that day, so we
could get in. His brother-in-law, Sai, and their cute daughter, Aparna,
came in the evening. After a long time, we had a nice Indian dinner,
thanks to Ranjani. I still had one extra day, which we had kept as a
back-up. So made plans to visit San Francisco the next day.