Who's gonna sell you your tacky stuff...tonight...

I overcame my boredom with driving to pull an all-dayer - leaving Ontario at 8:30 am on Friday morning, driving to Las Vegas, and returning at 1:30 in the morning. (I've done a quick turnaround before, but never to Vegas.)

That translated to approximately 8 hours in Las Vegas and Henderson. And, in case you're wondering what my wild Vegas party life is like, here's where I went:

• A relative's house in Henderson.


• The relative's hairdresser.


• An Office Depot on east Tropicana, for a quick copy job.


• A bank.


• Sunset Station, for the 5:00 pm bingo, six bucks of video poker, and dinner.


• Trader Joe's, for cookies.


• The relative's house.


• Another relative's house.


• The Terrible Herbst/Arco at Nellis and Charleston.

Wild, huh?

Back to the drive. I wasn't driving alone, which helped matters. But at midnight on Friday night I discovered something that I didn't know -

Barstow Station is not open 24 hours a day.

I had always had a vision of people in Barstow Station at 3:00 am, picking up tacky stuff on their way to wherever. But when we got to Barstow Station at 11:45 pm on a Friday night, the doors were locked shut and you couldn't get inside. The drive thru for the McDonalds was open, but that was it.

That was when I remember that Barstow (or, as Bloose affectionately calls it, Barfstow) is a very small town.

But at least the drive was quick, unlike my July 2006 drive.

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West Lilac to Pala, the Rough Way

Early this afternoon, after arriving at the West Lilac Road bridge and taking pictures and more pictures, I decided to drive eastward down West Lilac Road to see where I'd end up.

Before I begin the story, let me share a little more about where I started my journey. Although I didn't take any pictures of them, there were several private houses on West Lilac Road, including one that was under construction. All in all, it seemed like a nice place to get away from things, yet the houses are only a few miles from Escondido and Temecula.

After returning to my car, which was parked on West Lilac Road near Old Highway 395, I drove eastbound across the bridge and started moving down the road. I didn't have a map with me, but I had read an article a few days ago and vaguely remembered that West Lilac Road hooked up with Lilac Road. I figured I could follow Lilac Road up to State Route 76, then get back to the freeway from there.

Actually, I did have a map with me. My trusty Motorola Q was by my side, and I had previously loaded Google Maps onto it. Google Maps has worked out pretty well for me, except for some occasions when it thinks it doesn't have a data connection. I could have found my location on Google Maps and figured out how to get around, but I didn't think I'd need it. (As we'll later see, Google Maps wouldn't have helped me much.)

Seemed easy enough as I headed eastbound, passing some more houses. Eventually I passed a sign that said that I was in the unincorporated community of Valley Center. However, there wasn't any valley per se; everything was kind of hilly.

After a while, West Lilac Road intersected with Lilac Road as I expected. If I turned right, the sign said that I'd head toward Valley Center (or, I guess, the center of Valley Center). If I turned left, I'd get to State Route 76. Everything was just as I had expected.

I apologize now for not taking a picture of the sign, or of anything else that I saw after crossing over the bridge. The roads here had no shoulders, and there wasn't really a good place for me to stop the car and snap away.

Back to Lilac Road. It's too bad that I didn't take any pictures, because some of the places were wonderful. There were little plots of woods here and there, and I even crossed a small stream at one point. All the houses had a lot of land, and some of them were labeled as belonging to some ranch of another.

As I proceeded up Lilac Road, I didn't see any additional signs for Route 76, so I knew I was on the right track. I passed a number of roads, including Couser Canyon Road, but I ignored them all because I was on Lilac Road, and (as David Christof would say) life is good in...well, wherever I was. Somewhere around Valley Center.

Soon, I did see a sign, stating that I was 6 miles from Pala. This was definitely good news, since I vaguely remembered that Pala had a casino of some kind. I was even thinking about skipping my planned Buzztime lunch in Temecula and getting lunch at the casino instead.

Eventually, I saw another sign, stating that I was now on the tribal lands of the Pala Band of Mission Indians. Casino, here I come. I was up in the hills, but there wasw a valley coming up ahead, and the casino could be there.

Then I saw another sign, stating that the pavement would end in 300 feet.

No problem, I thought. I could see the valley ahead, and I could see a huge multi-story building, so I just had to follow Lilac Road and I'd end up at the casino. This would make up for not visiting Pechanga earlier in the week when I was driving south.

The road wasn't completely dirt - there was some old pavement under there - so I slowed down and headed down the hill.

Eventually, I came to some houses, situated beyond a fork in the road. Unfortunately, there were no signs here, so I didn't know if Lilac Road went right or left. The road to the right seemed bigger, so I headed right.

Away from the casino.

And the road got rougher, with some indentations in the road that initially made me think that I had a flat tire. I slowed down more, and more, and finally decided that this couldn't be Lilac Road, and that I should have gone left instead of right. I backtracked, took the left road, and seemed to be heading toward the casino.

Very slowly. The road was still very bumpy, but eventually I saw a sign and found out I was on "Lilac Extension." That sounded promising. (Subsequently, I discovered that the road to the right WAS Lilac Road, and that it did intersect with State Route 76...eventually. I found this out on Google Maps, which didn't have ANY notations stating that either Lilac Road or Lilac Extension were unpaved.)

Since I was going less than ten miles an hour, I was able to take glances at the houses on the reservation. They seemed to be well-constructed, but it appeared that they didn't have sewer lines, and I'm not even sure that they had running water. I saw huge tanks outside the houses, but I don't know if the tanks held water, or something else. With the shaking in the car, I didn't bother to look for electrical lines. A definite difference from the houses that I saw at the beginning of my journey.

Finally I made it to State Route 76, made a left, and passed by the Pala Casino without stopping. I had pretty much decided to head up to Temecula as fast as possible, and the sight of Clay Aiken's name (he's playing the casino in early August) pretty much confirmed my inclination.

Moral of the story - it appears that the printed maps are still better when you're in the hinterlands, although I still have to check a printed map to see what it says about the roads in the Valley Center-Pala area.

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More Pictures from West Lilac Road Bridge, July 27, 2007

Here's a second set of pictures. The first set can be found here.



The shot above shows Interstate 15, heading southbound toward San Diego.



This shot, again taken from the southwest corner of the bridge, shows the northbound view toward Temecula.



Walking back to my car, I shot this picture of a sign just before the intersection of West Lilac Road and Old Highway 395. I could have turned my car around, made a right hand turn, and headed north to rejoin Interstate 15.

But I didn't. More to come...

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Pictures from West Lilac Road Bridge, July 27, 2007

Here is the first set of pictures from my visit to the West Lilac Road bridge over Interstate 15 between Bonsall and Valley Center, California. These pictures were taken earlier today.



I parked my car near the corner of Old Highway 395 and West Lilac Road, and found this monument near the intersection. I couldn't find any identification of the deceased.



The picture above was taken from Old Highway 395, looking toward the bridge. My car is the closer of the two cars in the background.



Moving closer to the bridge.



Just about at the bridge.



The shot above was taken from the southwest corner of the bridge, and is an attempt to show the beauty of the bridge. Unfortunately, the best view of the bridge is from the freeway, and I don't think that snapping a photo of the bridge while driving would be such a wise move.

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At the West Lilac Bridge

Will post pictures later (still have to take 'em).

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Technology Solves a Mystery - Identifying the West Lilac Road Bridge

My last "mototrips" post was linked on the blogs page of the Motorola Road Trips web site, although it probably wasn't what the creators envisioned.

Well, this post probably doesn't fit into the mold either, since it didn't use a cell phone - though it could have, I guess, if I had snapped a picture or written a mobile blog. (As you will see, there's still time to rectify this.)

I've driven from Ontario to San Diego many times in the last two decades, and there's always been one part of the trip that fascinated me. After you cross into San Diego County, but before you get to Escondido, there's a bridge, seemingly out in the middle of nowhere, that crosses high above Interstate 15. Floodgap has a picture of the bridge if you don't know what I'm talking about.

I've always been curious about the bridge. Is it a road, a bike/walking path, or something else? Where does it go? Where has it been?

As I neared the bridge yesterday, I figured I'd record its exact location so that I could answer these questions for myself. For the record, the bridge is

• A little over two miles south of the junction between Interstate 15 and State Route 76.


• A little less than a mile north of the junction between Interstate 15 and Old Highway 395.

With this information, I got into Google Maps and was able to identify the bridge. My search results are here.

As you can see, this bridge is for West Lilac Road, which is easily accessible via Old Highway 395 (which parallels the interstate).

The aforementioned Floodgap devotes a page to this portion of U.S. Highway 395 and the surrounding roads. Here's some of the text; go here to see the associated pictures.

One important question was why US 395 was gutted at all, if it wasn't originally planned to expire with the other US highways killed by the Great Renumbering. The answer, as in so many other things, is money. As we will see, and the 1963 inset map demonstrates, I-15 only went down as far south as San Bernardino. However, the 1968 Federal Aid Highway Act, one of the component funding acts for the Interstate system, provided $201.2 million for construction to connect I-15 from San Diego to Colton, and rather than build a new routing, I-15 was simply handed US 395's instead. By 1974, US 395 was no longer indicated on most maps and I-15 would assume its present routing from San Diego to Temecula, and thence to Devore via Corona when that stretch was completed over old CA 71....

Old Highway 395 in San Diego county...[was so designated] after the construction of Interstate 15 started in this region in the late 1970s through the early 1980s. At least part, if not all, of present-day Old Highway 395 carried a TEMPORARY I-15 shield during the completion of the Interstate; I personally remember these shields up until at least 1986, and riding on Old Hwy 395 on family trips with the I-15 designator. There were no US 395 shields by that time....

Modern Old Highway 395

Champagne Blvd continues north to directly transform into Old Highway 395 (a bit of a misnomer as, of course, Champagne Blvd was also old US 395). This is the first actual signage indicating Old Hwy 395, just south of the Gopher Canyon Road exit. It hugs the modern I-15 very closely, which is just at the top of this incline (a callbox is visible)....

This is the first of two crossover points and the only exit actually signed Old Hwy 395 from I-15 (here NB). Here, Old Hwy 395 crosses from hugging the northbound lanes to paralleling the southbound lanes....

Going over the bridge that spans the freeway is a I-15 postmile, which might have been a leftover from when this was TEMP I-15....

Junction with W Lilac Rd back to Bonsall (and eventually CA 76), or eastbound...to cross I-15 with a dizzyingly high narrow concrete bridge instead.

I was traveling this route to go to Mira Mesa as early as 1984, and I can barely recall the non-freeway portion of the route. However, I do remember the stretch of temporary Interstate 15 just north of Corona, back when State Route 31 (Milliken/Hamner Avenue) served as the fake Interstate. So presumably the West Lilac Road bridge was built after I arrived in California, but I'm not certain about that.

If I get a chance, I'll try to revisit the area a little later (when I head northbound again), and maybe snap a photo or two or write a mobile blog or two.

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Jarring Juxtaposition

I'm not sure what it means when I drive by Tom's Farms -

Actually, before I get into this, I should explain what's happened to Tom's Farms. When I first moved to California in 1983, Tom's Farms was a fruit stand and furniture place that was out in the middle of nowhere, not too far from the original Glen Ivy Hot Springs Spa. These days, Glen Ivy has branches in malls, and Tom's Farms might as well be in a mall, because the original open spaces are long since gone, and Tom's Farms is hemmed in by all sorts of businesses, which are themselves hemmed in by all sorts of new housing springing up in that stretch of Riverside County.

Regardless, Tom's Farms still has a bit of that old-homey feeling, kinda like a Cracker Barrel without the glitz.

So, I'm not sure what it means when I drive by Tom's Farms while listening to this song:

We never see the daylight
We never watch the time
We love fast food
We are the wackos

These are the lyrics to "We Are The Wackos" [7/26 - UM, NO] by Basshunter, a Swedish one-man band (the man being Jonas Erik Altberg) of the synthetica variety.

Basshunter is better known for "Boten Anna," a song about a supposed bot who turns out to be a live person. (Hey, some of us are riveted by this kind of stuff.)

Anyway, Tom's Farms, despite the changes over the years, is not a night kind of place. So this jarring juxtaposition lingered in my mind all the way down Interstate 15.

Which, when you name the freeway, reminds one of another synthetic song, this one by the Stan Ridgway-era Wall of Voodoo. (Video link here.)

They aren't gonna let me on any more mototrips after this junk.

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Now you can promote our MOTOcodes

Genius move on Motorola's part, getting people to use "mototrips" as a tag.

A tag is a way of adding keywords to content you put on the Web, so it can be easily searched and accessed online. When you tag your pics, videos, blog postings and bookmarks with the keyword mototrips on certain Web sites, the Share Your Trip gallery will automatically snag and display your content for others to see.

Heh.

Het is donderdag 15-juni wanneer de trip vertrekt. Naar goede oude gewoonte is de eerste dag er eentje die begint met enkele honderden kilometers autosnelweg tot net onder Luxemburg. Ondanks het spitsuur zal er niet veel verkeerhinder zijn op ons traject; we vertrekken ten Zuiden van Brussel richting de Ardennen en dat is zoals men in de volksmond zegt "tegen 't verkeer in"!



Oops.

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