We left at ten o’clock and drove about ten minutes to California Speedway.  Unfortunately, it was gated off so we couldn’t get any good pictures.  A few minutes later we were on I10, which goes all the way to Phoenix.  The first part of the trip was fairly routine, but Hunter didn’t stay asleep for long.  He entertained himself with his toys. The way to Palm Springs has a lot of windmills.  Huge ones, little ones… just fields of them.  Most of them were churning away.  We hopped off the freeway at Palm Springs to get gas.  It almost windy enough to blow hats off heads.  I could see why they put all those windmills there.  We stopped down the road a bit in Desert Palms to get Heather some new jeans, since the ones she wanted to wear were baby-pukey.  Back on the road, we headed toward Blythe.

Halfway to Blythe, Hunter started fussing so we pulled over to let him eat and stretch after being cooped up in his carseat for so long.  He was so happy to be out and playing with mommy.  Unfortunately, that all ended when we needed to get back to the road.  He fussed most of the rest of the way to Blythe, but since he finally fell asleep, we decided to get something fast to eat for lunch and keep driving for as long as we could.  Since we weren’t going to eat inside someplace,  I had to stretch my legs before we got back on the freeway.  We stopped in a lot near the onramp back to the freeway and I stretched a bit.  Hunter woke up and continued his fussing before we were back on the road.

Once passed Blythe, we crossed the calm Colorado River.  Of course, so far south it isn’t very interesting.  It’s interesting how it’s easy to notice that you’ve just entered into a different place.  It didn’t seem so smoggy or hazy, and the rocks seemed to be a different shade.  Since Hunter was awake and fussy, we stopped at the first rest area to stretch, then continued on.  It’s pretty much a straight drive through Arizona.  Only a few times does the road actually bend a little or go up in elevation.  Since the little guy eventually fell asleep, we bypassed the next rest stop, but we did stop at the third, about an hour from Phoenix.  We were actually surprised that all three were open.  We found that in California, about half of the rest areas were closed for maintenance.

Traffic picked up once we got into the more suburban areas.  We saw the results of a multi-car accident that I am sure we missed by less than a minute.  I think about seven or eight cars were involved.  The speed didn’t pick up after we passed it, however, and we found out that the reason it happened in the first place was an accident about a half mile ahead.  Cars had been slowing for that one when they created the one we saw.  Before we had even known about it, I decided to tell the GPS that we wanted the best route that wasn’t on the highway.  It calculated a parallel route that we could take until the freeway traffic picked up.  I edged over to the right lane and took the next exit as the highway went up an overpass.  Waiting at the bottom of the exit, we could see a couple RVs and a few cars, as well as a couple fire engines and ambulances.  Since they were at the top of the overpass, I just went straight back onto the freeway and saved us ten or twenty minutes.  A mile down the road, what did we see?  A third multi-car accident on the next offramp.

Civilization rose up around us and soon we were in Phoenix.  We pulled into the hotel parking lot with a few minutes to spare before the sun set.  After unsuccessfully driving around to find a pizza place, we took a fussy baby back to the hotel and ate dinner at the next-door Denny’s.  For as much as I usually have them down the list of places to go to eat, they’ve really got a good menu.  We might have to go back later in the week so I can try one or two more things.

Heather and Hunter have passed out on the bed.  I don’t think we’re setting an alarm clock for tomorrow, since the first thing we have to do is the baseball game between the A’s and Dodgers, and that doesn’t start until 1pm.  So as long as Hunter is sleeping, we’ll be sleeping.

So yea.  Baseball tomorrow!

We planned on leaving at about nine am this morning, but we had a missing kitty to find.  We weren’t sure if she had snuck outside while we were packing the car, so we couldn’t leave until we knew where she was.  It turned out she was spooked by the vacuum as I cleaned the car out and she hid in our bedroom under the comforter.  Anyway, we finally got on the road about ten o’clock and headed toward I5.

Driving down the main north-south highway isn’t too exciting.  We did see some workers performing some kind of operation on one of those giant power line towers along I5.  It was completely off on two of the four corners and suspended by a giant crane.  We went by it so fast we didn’t get a chance to see snap a photo.  Hunter slept the whole three hours to Coalinga before waking up and then played with his toys until we arrived in Buttonwillow for lunch.  We ate at Tita’s Mexican and had awesome bean and cheese pupusas.  It was our second time visiting Tita’s on an I5 drive.

After that, we decided to change up our travel itinerary.  Instead of driving down I5 to 210 and over to Ontario, we decided to head east through Bakersfield and over Tehachapi to Mojave.  It was a different drive than the urban 210.  Pretty views, though there was a lot of smoggy air so we could only see the outlines of the mountains in the distance until we got closer.  Heather was disappointed there wasn’t more sand.  Instead it was just lots of shrubbery.  South on 395 we made out third stop of the day to feed a hungry little one and stretch some legs.  We drove by Maverick Stadium on 395, the home of the High Desert Mavericks, the Single-A affiliate of the Seattle Mariners.  We expected it to be warmer in the Mojave Desert, but it was quite cool.  Probably just the time of the year.

Shortly after that, we drove through the Cajon pass and into the LA area.  Our hotel is in Ontario near the Ontario Mills Mall, which reminds me of the Great Mall in Milpitas.  Unfortunately, the room smelled like someone had been smoking, which was odd because the entire hotel is a non-smoking facility.  The second room is much better.

Overall, not a terribly exciting day, but it was neat to drive through a places we’ve never driven before and see the difference scenery.  Up tomorrow, we go east up Highway 10 through Blythe and into Arizona.  We should be in Phoenix by the afternoon.

You can see some pictures here on Facebook.