Friday Night Halfway in... Chowchilla?
Jun. 28th, 2024 10:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerTonight we're at a hotel in Chowchilla, California. No, not chinchilla. That's a species of rodent native to the Andes Mountains of Chile. Chowchilla. It's a town of approximately 19,000 people in California's Central Valley. By California standards that's basically a highway rest stop, though by New Zealand standards... it's twice the size of the towns of Clinton and Gore, combined.
Why Chowchilla? It's Friday Night Halfway. We're headed to a couple of hikes in the Sierra National Forest tomorrow. Today's drive of 128 miles knocks out a few hours of travel, leaving us a drive of just 56 miles, about 1 hour 15 minutes, to our first hiking trail tomorrow.
We got stuck in some traffic driving to Chowchilla this evening. Normally it'd be a drive of just over 2 hours. Leaving at 4:45pm— which, yes, was less than 24 hours after I got home from a business trip 🥵— we caught a bit of early rush hour traffic driving south to Gilroy on US-101. We stopped for dinner in Gilroy wondering if maybe the traffic east through the Pacheco Pass might clear a bit but, alas, it didn't. We were stuck in the usual Friday Night Escape misery on CA-152. We'd lost almost an hour to traffic delays by the time we got to Los Banos. We stopped there for a bathroom break, leg stretch, and ice cream cones. Oof, I really needed the leg stretch. And the ice cream was good, too. 😂
Continuing east from Los Banos it was smooth sailing the last leg of the trip to Chowchilla. We arrived at our hotel at 8:45pm, for a trip of 4 hours including traffic and food stops.
What's in Chowchilla, other than approximately 19,000 people? Well, first of all, that 19,000 figure apparently includes the inmates in two area prisons. How many are free to leave their rooms in the morning like we will, I don't know. 😂
Chowchilla really is a highway rest-stop type of town. I mean, people do live here. We passed by many houses and a few apartment buildings on the drive in. It's an agricultural town. People who live here presumably work the farms in this area and the businesses that support them. And staff the two prisons. 😂 But the businesses in town are mostly gas stations and a few fast food restaurants clustered near highway 99.
Update: You know what happens after Friday Night Halfway, right? It's Saturday Morning the Rest of the Way!
Why Chowchilla? It's Friday Night Halfway. We're headed to a couple of hikes in the Sierra National Forest tomorrow. Today's drive of 128 miles knocks out a few hours of travel, leaving us a drive of just 56 miles, about 1 hour 15 minutes, to our first hiking trail tomorrow.
We got stuck in some traffic driving to Chowchilla this evening. Normally it'd be a drive of just over 2 hours. Leaving at 4:45pm— which, yes, was less than 24 hours after I got home from a business trip 🥵— we caught a bit of early rush hour traffic driving south to Gilroy on US-101. We stopped for dinner in Gilroy wondering if maybe the traffic east through the Pacheco Pass might clear a bit but, alas, it didn't. We were stuck in the usual Friday Night Escape misery on CA-152. We'd lost almost an hour to traffic delays by the time we got to Los Banos. We stopped there for a bathroom break, leg stretch, and ice cream cones. Oof, I really needed the leg stretch. And the ice cream was good, too. 😂
Continuing east from Los Banos it was smooth sailing the last leg of the trip to Chowchilla. We arrived at our hotel at 8:45pm, for a trip of 4 hours including traffic and food stops.
What's in Chowchilla, other than approximately 19,000 people? Well, first of all, that 19,000 figure apparently includes the inmates in two area prisons. How many are free to leave their rooms in the morning like we will, I don't know. 😂
Chowchilla really is a highway rest-stop type of town. I mean, people do live here. We passed by many houses and a few apartment buildings on the drive in. It's an agricultural town. People who live here presumably work the farms in this area and the businesses that support them. And staff the two prisons. 😂 But the businesses in town are mostly gas stations and a few fast food restaurants clustered near highway 99.
Update: You know what happens after Friday Night Halfway, right? It's Saturday Morning the Rest of the Way!
