Road trip to Long Beach

I tagged along with Ate Gigi, Kuya Merlin, and Joycelyn to attend Matthew's graduation in CSULB. This was my first time to go to SoCal by land and only the second time I popped in. The first time I was there, I flew in from New Orleans and stayed in Torrance. This time, I was going to Long Beach, a place Anna kept talking about.

Interstate 5, according to Joycelyn, is one of the most boring routes. But the scenery is definitely pretty. We passed by hills and by fields with a lot of cows. This was Harris Cattle Ranch, one of the major beef producers in the West Coast. As we drove past, they were telling me that the place typically stinks because of the cows. But the wind must be blowing in a different direction because we didn't smell it when we were driving by. The scenery reminded me of the Windows computer screensaver; the traffic (cars and big rigs), of Cars (particularly of Mac and Lightning McQueen). 

The rolling landscapes along the I-5 eventually became tall, snow-covered peaks of the Tehachapi Mountains... we were officially leaving the San Joaquin Valley floor and tracing our way through the Grapevine. The road ascended rapidly until we reached the Tejon Pass, the highest point of the highway. From there, the road descended and gave us great views of Pyramid Lake. It's actually the result of damming the Piru Creek and was created as part of California's aqueduct system, bringing water from the northern parts of the state to water-scarce regions. Pyramid Lake was named as such because of the pyramid-shaped rock with tiers (left side of the photo); these were made by road engineers while building the highway.

And then we were in the flat lands again... and traffic just got heavier. This was my first taste of Los Angeles traffic for a long time! It was like being back in the Philippines but with traffic actually moving on the thoroughfare. It was intimidating to watch cars keep short distances from each other and drive at high speeds. NorCal driving, I think, is much more relaxed.

We didn't go into downtown L.A. (which I haven't seen yet) because we were going to Long Beach. But we did see some skyscrapers. On a typical day, they said, we'd see the sky thick with smog from all the vehicles plying the streets. However, when we drove past, the sky was relatively clear. Apparently, rain had been falling... on Twitter, people were promoting the #LArain hashtag; it's as if the city doesn't receive a lot of rain and people, on that day, were in panic mode. Seeing a downpour when you're not used to a drizzle can be scary. Aside from rain, people were tweeting about hail and thunderstorms in various parts of the metro area. Quite a lot of precipitation for one afternoon.

We only got a whiff of the wet weather when a few drops of rain was blown by the wind to where we were (stuck in traffic).

And when we arrived in Long Beach, I did not see the beach. We were so far inland that I could only see freeway and buildings. No oceanfront at all. It's like when I stayed at the Waterfront Hotel in Cebu but the beach (or any body of water, except the swimming pool) was not in sight.