Day 4: Flagstaff to Lake Havasu and Bakersfield

Today’s Flickr Gallery | July 23rd: I left Flagstaff at 8:30 in the am, and finally arrived at Rafaela’s place in Bakersfield around 5:30 in the evening. Needless to say, apart from the Houston-Amarillo drive, this was one of the longer drives thus far.

As has become the norm over the past few days, the day started with breakfast from the hotel. Having devoured the somewhat salty scrambled eggs and a sausage patty, I stopped to get some gas and check the tire pressure, which gave me a chance to snap the friendly hotel greeting:

The drive itself was filled with a variety of landscapes, starting with Seqouia National forest just outside of Flagstaff proper. Usually, when people think Arizona, they conjure images of vast, sweeping deserts and the iconic Grand Canyon. But when you get this high in elevation, you really come to appreciate the beautifully vast forest that its also home to.

That being said, as I continued on Interstate 40, I continued to head to lower lands, which gradually brought me to the more familiar desert. Prior drives through desert hadn’t brought me up close to real cacti, but this time around, as I pulled off the highway onto a dirt road, I finally came across some.

Pressing onward, I continued to westward bound for California. Right around the border, I took a detour about 20 miles south to see what Lake Havasu was like. Rafaela had mentioned it would be great for photos, and it really was!

I spent a half hour there before I came to realize just how hot it had become: temperatures in the area were easily over a hundred degrees. As it was already past noon, I figured I needed to get something to eat, but also wanted to stay on track to make it to Bakersfield at a reasonable hour. I feel like the compromise I arrived at was pretty decent: Even though I’m hardly a fan of McDonald’s these days, their chicken nuggets are a quick bite, made even more accessible by my ripping the top off the box and fitting the rest of it in my cup holder. That meant I could drive and eat without having to focus too much attention on the latter. Woohoo, lol.

A little while later, I finally crossed into California. Along the final leg towards Bakersfield, I slowly moved from desert back to mountains, and while they weren’t nearly as green as the ones from earlier in the day, there’s no denying the views were beautiful.

Sadly, the farther in elevation you get, the reality is that stopping on the side of the road becomes a little more dangerous, especially with the roads being as busy as they were. So I didn’t quite stop to take some major photos, but I think the phone’s camera did a decent job of capturing the sense of the area. Soon enough, I was through the mountains and coming downhill again. As I approached Bakersfield, I made it a point to note a milestone in my trip: 2000 miles driven.

When I finally pulled in at 5:30, I must say it was wonderful to see a familiar face! We spent the rest of the day catching up on life, having a wonderful home-cooked meal (complete with an initially failed-but-hilarious attempt to start the grill ). We also agreed to an early start to the morning so that we’d be able to spend most of tomorrow at Disneyland.

Overall, today was another great leg of the trip! More to come soon, appreciate people sticking with the blog even as I’ve been a little slow to get complete updates in !