Well, time for the California trek rundown. I may twiddle this post in the future as I remember more things. My brother is now in Rancho Cordova, California, a suburb of Sacramento (and arguably Folsom, where he will be working).
My dad came up on Saturday the 29th with the minivan (Honda Odyssey) and a U-Haul trailer. Fortunately everyone had guesstimated properly and the trailer was just the right size. There was a little difficulty getting my brother's bike in there, and a few things got scratched by the front fork as it was fiddled with, but things eventually found good places to settle. In the end, there was only minor damage to stuff.
Brian and I grabbed a few things from my apartment and headed to our parents' place about half an hour after Dad headed out. I had expected that we would start out on Sunday, but we ended up holding off until Monday. The route was pretty simple, basically just U.S. 14 west to I-35 south, then west on I-80. The first day, we were able to listen to MPR's 89.3 FM until we passed I-90 while going along Interstate 35. After that, my brother and I took turns playing CDs from our own collections. No, we didn't bother to try seeking on the radio in the middle of Nevada just to watch it loop around.
The first day was Minnesota to Grand Island, Nebraska (Is there an island there? I doubt it). Tuesday took us most of the way through the Rocky Mountains to Rock Springs, Wyoming and into the Mountain Time Zone. On Wednesday, we finished off Wyoming, passed through Utah, and stopped in Winnemucca, Nevada in the Pacific Time Zone. We finally reached our destination on Thursday.
Iowa was pretty flat. Nebraska was flatter, aside from the fact that the whole state is slanted upward on the west end. Mountains suddenly appeared in Wyoming. We made our highest pass there, at 8640 feet, I believe (maybe a little higher). Due to a curiosity of the geography there, we passed the continental divide twice. Everything out that way was covered with frost.
It turns out that I-80 basically follows the famous Oregon Trail as it winds westward. We descended into Utah through Echo Canyon and dealt with crazy traffic on an eastern descent into Salt Lake City. Getting smashed by an out-of-control semi is not my idea of a good day. Fortunately, appropriate use of engine braking helped us get into the city safely. We had to deal with a maze of highway ramps to stay on I-80, and we finally stopped for lunch that day on the shore of the Great Salt Lake. It was a nice reprieve, with clear sky and warmer temperatures.
Er, well, "shore" is relative with that lake. The area of water at the time was ginormous (what you see on maps is just the part that is almost always covered in water. In fact, most of northwest Utah is swampy muck that was wet at the time we passed through. For about 60 miles from Salt Lake City to the western border, there is almost literally nothing. Just some roads and a rail line that are on dikes cutting through areas of water that turn into salt flats in warmer periods (we saw a lot of evidence of people driving vehicles down in the muck). For at least 30 miles, the highway is perfectly straight. This is a bad thing, so there are some oddities along the way. There's a big tree sculpture about ten miles from the border, probably with no other purpose than to get your brain going after being sedated by the monotony.
Well, at least we were able to maintain 65 to 70 mph most of the way westward, aside from the climbs. Many people decide not to go full speed, so we were passing others relatively often even though the speed limit was usually 75 mph. We saw our first triple-trailered semis on that flat stretch of Utah, and they continued all of the way to Reno, Nevada. Aside from the hills, Nevada was very boring. It was foggy at times every day on our voyage westward, but it seemed to be the worst there. That's where first heard about "freezing fog advisories". It was part of the reason why everything was covered in frost. Fortunately, we didn't have any significant trouble with the road surface being wet or icy. A few spots were iffy, but mostly in the passing lane. We only really had trouble with snow on one day in Wyoming.
Heading through the Sierras was interesting and probably the most annoying stretch of the trip. We were partly stressed by the fact that Intel suddenly required my brother to get a Social Security Number verification from a Social Security office. We were going to try in Reno, but there was a three hour wait. At least our diversion took us under the famous Reno sign. Leaving Reno, we had to deal with horribly rutted roads, most likely because of snow chains. Well, at least my brother and I were in his Honda Accord, and not dealing with the jerkiness of a heavy trailer like my parents.
It was oh so much fun when I saw a sign that said something like "Steep grades next 40 miles". Couple that with crazy Californians headed out of Tahoe and the fact that we had to stay in the rutted right lane because of speed restrictions on trucks and trailers, it was a very stressful period of the trip. Things finally started to flatten out a bit by the time we reached Auburn, which can be considered at outer suburb of Sacramento (well, heck, you can say that of Tahoe in the crazy commuterscape of California). We spent a few hours in Auburn as we did the Social Security bidness, then discovered that I-80 in California does not have mile markers or numbered exits. This contributed to a messy string of attempts to land on a road headed southward to Rancho Cordova. This wouldn't be a big issue around Minneapolis, or even Sacramento proper, but we were smack dab in suburbia, where almost no road goes straight and grids do not exist. But we finally made it.
My brother is hopefully going to do his part to fix the horrible traffic situation in the area since he got an apartment near a light rail line in the area. We checked two places on Friday, and just went for the one he wanted in the first place. Move-in was on Saturday, and Sunday we did a few things including an excursion into Sacramento via the light rail line (It's a much rougher ride than the Hiawatha. I suppose we just have to wait a few years). We saw the capitol and then headed back in order to get me to the airport, which seems to be in a really odd location. I flew to Las Vegas, then had a three-hour layover before catching a red-eye flight to Minneapolis. The plane landed around 6, and I got to my apartment a few minutes after 7 via light rail and bus. My parents are heading back to Minnesota (possibly via Denver to visit my aunt) in the van tomorrow (Tuesday).
A few random thoughts: