One Lap

Date: 11/20/2013

Day: 55, the Ultimate Day.

Location:   Home is the Blogger, Home from the Road.

Miles Today: 318

Total Miles:  12,753

On the Road, Parkfield, Harris Ranch, Home, Lessons Learned, Mysteries not Explained, Seen on the Road, Tomorrow

On the Road

Our drive home today began northward on California101, a beautiful devided highway at this point which runs through rolling hills and oak trees.

 

 

CA 101 follows the historic El Camino Real which connected the Franciscan Missions.

 

 

 

 

Herewith, an example; San Miguel Archangel.  The path to Parkfield is due west on a two lane road from CA 101, through the coastal hills.



 

 

After about 40 miles you arrive at the small town.

 

Parkfield

Parkfield is a very small town, population 18 according to the sign, located on the Little Cholame Creek in Monterey County.  Ranching and farming keep these people busy, but there is also a small tourism industry.  Parkfield is the self proclaimed earthquake capitol of the world. The town motto is, "Be here when it happens."  It lies adjacent to the most active part of the San Andres fault,  which manifests itself here as an intermittently dry creek bed; wet on this day.    Since 1857, Parkfield has had an earthquake of 6 or greater on an average of every 22 years.  It is the most closely observed earthquake zone in the world.

 

 

This creek marks the divide between the North American Plate and the Pacific Plate.

 WikiMiniAtlas

 

The piers of the bridge below have shifted more than five feet relative to one another since the bridge was first constructed in 1936.  That is, the Pacific Plate has moved five feet to the north against the North American Plate.

 

 

 

 

This description of the local geology is posted at the USGS facility.

 

The scar in the asphalt is an artifact of the creeping fault interface.

 

The current bridge is clearly designed to allow for ground movement.

This is the USGS outpost in Parkfield.  If you would like to read about Parkfield,  this is a link to the USGDS website: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/research/parkfield/index.php

 

 

They have fun with (and one assumes make the odd buck from) the occasional earthquake weenie who comes to visit Parkfield.  Unfortunately, the Parkfield Café is closed Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, so they did not make a buck off of us.

 

The Parkfield Inn is still in operation, but the only person on site told us, in Spanish,  that we had to talk to the people in the Café who were, of course, not there.

 

 

It looks like a nice place; if our travels ever take us this way again, we will give it a try.

 

It is unusual to see a pioneer monument that begins by honoring the first people.

 

This is the E Clampus Vitus San Andréas plaque.  Clever fellows.

For a town that is virtually a mail stop for the surrounding ranches, Parkfield is a nice place. 

The drive from Parkfield to I-5 is stunning; Central California at its best.  This is again about 40 miles, some of it washboard dirt road.

 

Harris Ranch

A commercial establishment of no particular charm on I-5.  Why is it worth mention?  Very near the halfway point between San Francisco and LA, it has been for more than 20 years a convenient place to stop when making this drive.  (I used to do it every 6 weeks or so.)   It boasts large, clean, restrooms and therefore earns this plug.  It also offers very good beef -- it is located a mile or so from the Harris Ranch cattle feed lot, just to remind us of our place in the food chain -- that is supplied in cold packs for the three hour journey home.  If you stop there, and you should if you make the SF to LA trip, also check out their excellent almonds.  The food in their nicely appointed restaurant?  Stay close to the beef; everything else is under seasoned and has been for a generation.

 

Home

I am obliged to say -- because it is true -- there is no place like it. 

I will go nowhere tomorrow. 

Colonel Wellington Boot is retired to the imaginary world from which he came; no more black string tie, no more paste on goatee, no more snarky third person or editorial "we."  Road names live only as long as one is on the road.

Lessons Learned

 

It is a wonderful thing to be able to take off for 55 days with no guidance other than whimsy.  It requires a degree of good health (you will be by yourself a lot for an extended time) , some money in the bank (this is not an inexpensive undertaking) and concurrence from those you love.   Each of these things requires good fortune by the prospective One Lapper.   If you are so blessed, I encourage you to do this, or whatever suits your circumstances.  Everyone needs an occasional adventure of significant scale. 

If your One Lap project involves a long drive of some kind, consider carefully if you want to be away from home for almost two months.

The drive I made was hard on 13K miles over 55 days.  That's about 235 miles a day.  I am very ready to be home -- 55 days is a long time to be gone -- but I wish I could had dawdled a bit more along the way.  If I were going to do this again -- I will not -- I believe I would divide the journey into thirds.  Perhaps Oakland to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Portsmouth to Key West , Key West to home, returning by air upon completion of each leg, the segments being maybe 4 or 5 weeks long..   This means driving a rental car, and more expense, but would solve the contradictory problems of things not seen and being gone too long.

The timing of this trip was just about ideal.  I missed the really cold weather across the northern states.  Perhaps September/October would have been a safer bet weather-wise.

The roads are good, the people kind, the country beautiful.  Literally everyone I met was interested in what I was doing and wanted to talk about it.  Get out there!

Mysteries not Explained

Why does virtually every motel have a different arrangement to manage the water in the shower/bath?  I would think that the engineers would find an optimum design and variations of it would be common.  Not so.  Some you twist, some you pull, some you pull and twist, some up, some down, some have a separate thingy for flow and temperature.   For the mechanically inept, this must be a challenge.  At one motel the guy at the front desk even asked, as I left, if I had had a problem in this regard; apparently it was a test of the travelers acumen.

The same thought applies to the pylons that support high tension lines.  The power lines cross the country, of course, and the towers are never alike.  Is there not one most safe and cost efficient way to support these things, something you could order from a catalog?

Seen on the Road

 

 

Ghost Riders ...  in the Sky.

The cloud gods gave us a spectacular show as we came into the Bay Area.

Tomorrow

I will stay home and make dinner for my dear wife.

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog.

Finis.

James Leeper