(Words and Photos by Scott Liggett) – My yearly road trip north to see family and friends for Christmas was not planned with any epic side trips like going to see the giant sequoias or hiking through a cave that crossed the San Andreas fault line. OK. In truth, I didn’t plan those either. They just happened.
In reality, I just really see something on a map that looks interesting like a line with a number on it and I go in that direction.
On this trip all I really planned to do was make a bee line straight to my mother’s house. I really didn’t look at the map for fascinating side trips. I was going to take the tried and true I-5 straight there. But, that plan went out the window mostly because of the holiday traffic mixed with slow moving semi trucks. In California, trucks have to drive 55 mph on the same two lanes cars allowed to do 70 mph. But those cars are usually doing closer to 80 mph. With heavy traffic it can very annoying especially when a mob of cars have to mash the brakes because one semi needs to pass another. Top that with slow moving bozos who seem to think they stay in the left lane because they are “through traffic”. These morons never seem to notice the signs that say Slower Traffic Keep Right. So, you end up passing many on the right. To move at the speed you want you have to drive aggressively which is tiring and annoying for six hours. I left I-5 again.
My first side trip was to see Buttonwillow Raceway. It is literally right near I-5, but also on the way to one of my favorite abandoned highways, SR 33. I had heard about this track a few years ago and wanted to see it. It was up and running on Saturday when I got there. The nice, young lady working there gave me a bunch of info and let me go in to take pictures.
It’s a really nice facilty with three road courses, the long 3 mile course, a 1.1 mile and a 1.8 mile. Plus they have a drag strip on the long course’s big long straight away. This place would be totally bitchin to take over with a bunch of guys and gals to run the road course and drag strip for the weekend.
This is how I like to travel nowadays. Empty highways. Much more relaxing.
The sky looked like this whole trip. With my Impala’s single speed wipers, it was a bit annoying. Not enough rain to just turn them on and leave them on. Too much rain, not to turn them on at all. So I was on and off on the them for hours. I need to get intermittent wipers for my cars.
At more than 70 mph rain comes in past the old, dried out window seals. So was the wind. It was bubbling in past the window trim. There is no rust, thankfully, on the sides of the windshield just old seals.
Nothing like a massive bull buffalo standing on a mound to completely stop you in your tracks. He didn’t like me taking this picture and came off his mound.
The sun going down under the clouds gave a really cool glow on sides of my car at the gas stop. Too bad the car looked like it was driven off road in the slop.
I do drive a lot without the tunes, but I did install a loud stereo for a reason. But recently, every time the base hit, I got weird noise that sounded like crickets. After a while of looking I finally figured out it was one of the bows from my now non-existent head liner. It was vibrating against the roof like some weird music instrument. My quick fix, business card stuffed between two pieces of metal to stop vibration and out of tune instrument.
That was the extent of my trip north.
On my way south, I went some small towns in the central valley. What I noticed is that they were thriving. In 2006, people were moving farther from the bigger cities and the ease of getting mortgages allowed that. But, when the economy went bust, I saw a lot of small towns and their new home neighborhoods get creamed. But, here things were different. The towns of Patterson, Newman and Gustine along SR 33 had beautiful little Main Streets that were full of businesses and not boarded up shops. I liked that.
On Newman’s Main St, this cool old theater seemed to be announcing the arrival of James Garner.
I have a thing for the art deco era of building from the late ’20’s to early ’30’s. It’s my favorite building style. While in Gustine, I saw this little building that was obviously built by the Jenson Brothers decades ago. I’m not sure what business they had there, but now there is a speed shop and body shop in the building.
Inside the front windows, I found some gearhead goodies. Especially, if you like old tractors like our fearless leader, Brian Lohnes. I caught these two along with a roadster and T bucket.
My usual first gas stop is near Gustine and Los Banos. I topped off the gas tank to the brim because I was going off my usual route and into the wild. I decided to take SR 25 south for a while. To get there I had turn west on SR 152 for nearly 30 miles into the coastal range before going south. The coastal mountains are much more beautiful than the central valley.
This is SR 25, approximately 45 miles of twisty two lane highway that run through a valley literally next to the San Andreas fault line from Hollister to Coalinga. I saw a total of five cars out there. It was a great place to work out my new suspension parts. There is nothing better than seat time to get to know how your car reacts in the corners. So, I got busy.
I did stop to take a few pics along the way of the gorgeous valley.
I found these three cars in a creek bed. Not sure if they were put there for flood control or some one just parked their wrecks out by the river.
Is there anything better for a gear head and his hot rod than this?
SR 25 dead ends into SR 198 in which I turned back east to go to Coalinga, but the fun wasn’t over. SR 198 climbs over the mountains. The rain came back and made spirited driving a lot more interesting.
Back on SR 33 south, the drive and the views turn again to almost a desert like environment. Towards towns like Taft, there are hundreds of oil fields and oil pumps. There are dozens of dirt roads that are only marked with oil company signs marking their wells. I went down one of these roads to get a couple pictures since they forgot to put up no trespassing signs.
I nearly made it home when the car stalled in holiday traffic only 30 miles from home and wouldn’t restart. It appeared to be a fuel pump. I suppose I could have had my car towed to a local O’Rielly’s and replaced the fuel pump, but I suspected it could’ve been something else. I was exhausted and in pain, so I just towed the car home. Turns out my instincts were right. The fuel pump was not the problem, just the fuel lines clogged.
Looks like a great trip through beautiful scenery. Thanks for documenting it Scott.
Very entertaining feature.
It’s super that Scott takes his road trips in a full-size American car. Set up with the right parts, they’ll rival foreign performance cars in clicking off a couple of hundred miles at high average speeds in quiet comfort.
Also it beats hell out of guys who have their restored cars only for cruising the 15 miles to and from the local A&W. Get out and drive your cars!
Car Craft Anti-Tour. Auto-cross and drag strip!!
Dude, you read my mind!
Scott: always enjoy your California road trip ‘postcards’ published here in BANGshift. Happy new year, man!
Scott,great pictures! I love to see the scenery from a fellow gear heads point of view! What clogged the fuel line?
I think the vent tube was clogged, probably by insect homes. I used compressed air to blow out fuel line with gas cap off, but the fuel refused to come out. I did it again with the gas cap on and suddenly fuel.began to flow.
Grate trip Scott loved the pics . The hotrod N6 whit the flathead V8 was cool
thanks for the story