canyonwalker: My old '98 M3 convertible (cars)
When we stopped in Bakersfield Saturday evening it wasn't just to recharge the EV's battery. We were staying for the night.

We rolled into town around 6:30pm, a great time for dinner. First we checked in to our hotel, though. Staying there for the night was part of David and his family's plan. I had already done the mental arithmetic that if it were Hawk and I driving home— by which I mean I were driving home— we'd have dinner in Bakersfield and then drive all the way home, another 4 hours. Yes, that would put us at home at 11:30pm and, yes, that would be on a day I started at 4:30am, but that's how I roll. No rest for the wicked. David'd not as hardcore of a traveler, though, so we were taking it easy with an overnight stop in Bakersfield.

I've warned in past blogs that Bakersfield is a shithole town. That's a bit of a misnomer; Bakersfield is not a town. 🤣 With a population of now over 400,000 in city limits and nearly 1,000,000 in its metro area it's a budding shithole metropolis.

Our hotel, which was pretty nice inside, was still in a sketchy neighborhood. I'm not sure there are any non-sketchy neighborhoods in Bakersfield. What's sketchy? Well, the neighboring hotel was a tenement with barred windows, and our hotel had a uniformed security guard outside in the parking lot walking rounds to chase away vagrants. I saw him intercept one whom he apparently was on a first name basis with. And that was before dark.

For dinner we found some surprisingly good eats at a restaurant called The Firehouse. I had a meaty tri-tip sandwich I happily finished off with a veritable bucket of french fries I ultimately threw away 10% eaten, while David had a plate of ribs so thick he threw away his sides mostly uneaten, too.

After that we charged the car, came back to the hotel, and stayed in for the night.

Now it's Sunday morning, 8:30am. We've had breakfast, David's taking a shower, and we'll roll about 9am.

The drive home— well, home for me, anyway— is 251 miles. David's house is another 32 miles. We'll stop for recharging once on the way and arrive at my place between 1:30-2pm.


canyonwalker: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Travel! (planes trains and automobiles)
High Desert Weekend Trip-log #2
Bakersfield, CA - Sat, 26 Mar, 2002. 8am

There's good news and bad news about our trip to Bakersfield last night. The good news is, the drive wasn't as long or as late as I feared. We actually rolled out of our garage at 6:20pm, instead of closer to 7 as I feared. Then there were minimal traffic delays leaving Silicon Valley to the south. We did make several stops along the way— for gas, dinner, snacks, and shopping 😅— but door-to-door the trip took only 5 hours, not 6. We checked in just before 11:20pm and were settled in our hotel room by 11:30.

What's the bad news? The bad news is we still had to spend the night in Bakersfield. 😨🤣

But even that bad news turned out not to be as bad as I feared. For one, as it was late at night, we didn't have to see much of Bakersfield. Nor did we encounter many of its residents. By that hour of the night most people in Bakersfield are already asleep, in drug induced comas, or dead. (Fact: most murders are committed before 10pm as murderers like to keep regular hours.)

Then there was the not-bad news about our hotel.

Patio view at the Sheraton Four Points in Bakersfield (Mar 2022)

It... genuinely didn't suck. ...Which was a pleasant surprise as its reviews on Yelp made it seem like it had degenerated into a shit-hole. We even got a room with a nice little outdoor patio overlooking the pool area.

Yelp Approved"Why would you stay at a hotel multiple reviews claim is a shit-hole?" you might ask.

Well, the thing is, in Bakersfield pretty much all hotels have reviews claiming they are shit-holes. The older ones, like the Sheraton Four Points I picked, have numerous reviews faulting them for being outdated, dingy, and with surly staff. But even the newly built ones, like built within the past 2 years, have complaints of poor cleaning and hot water not working. And surly staff. Basically the staff are surly everywhere. Probably because they live in Bakersfield.

I decided that probably most people were disappointed with the fact Bakersfield hotels are in Bakersfield and tried my luck with one of the lower rated ones, the Sheraton Four Points. It was super cheap on points. I figured it if really did suck I could write it off as a small loss and have a great story to tell.

While the hotel wasn't great, it didn't suck. Things that were good: Our room was roomy. The bed was comfortable, and the plumbing in the bathroom worked. The front desk employee who checked me in wasn't surly... though I didn't ask of him any more than the basic transaction to show ID and get my keys.

Things that weren't so good: The drywall in the bathroom showed evidence of obvious and poorly-done repairs, though that didn't bother me much. The whole complex of buildings had a "Built in the early '80s, pretty dull, and now well used" vibe to it, but that didn't bother me, either, once I was in our room— which fortunately had been updated much more recently than the 1980s. The sliding glass door out to the patio was a nice touch. I left the door open with the sheer curtain drawn while I wound down for bed. (I closed it before laying down to sleep. I wasn't going to take the chance of one of Bakersfield's homeless junkies wandering in!)

Well, here it is barely 9 hours after we arrived, and we're getting ready to leave. Our stay in Bakersfield has been a success. We've minimized our time here and, on top of that, spent most of it unconscious. And not plagued by a ratty room or stabbed to death by junkies.

Up next
Oo-ooh, I heard it through the Grapevine!

canyonwalker: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Travel! (planes trains and automobiles)
High Desert Weekend Trip-log #1
Leaving home soon (I hope) - Fri, 25 Mar 2022, 5:45pm

Tonight we leave on a weekend trip to visit the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve and other parks in the high desert of California. We won't actually get as far as all that tonight, though. We'll drive as far as Bakersfield. It's our Friday Night Halfway technique... which I realize we haven't employed much lately. The last was six months ago, in October; then before that, not since a night in Folsom in July.

There's good news and bad news about staying in Bakersfield tonight. The good news is that we'll actually be more than halfway there. We'll have covered over 4 hours and 250 miles of driving already. Tomorrow morning we'll have just over an hour more to get to the park. Yeah, if I wanted to be technical I could have titled this journal entry "Friday Night 77% of the Way There," but that's foolish.

The bad news is we'll be in Bakersfield. It's an overgrown dusty shit-hole town at the edge of where California's agricultural Central Valley meets the desert oil belt. The ground's almost too arid to farm, the summer heat is brutal, the air is awful, and probably half the population is on illegal drugs. ...Not that I fault them too much. If I had to live in this hell-scape I'd probably turn to drugs, too.

Another minus is that we'll arrive late at night. Though we aimed to roll from home not long after 6pm it's already looking that will be closer to 7. And we'll need to stop for gas. And dinner. And a bit of shopping— we're still trying to find more bowls matching our new set of plates! 🤣 And there will likely be traffic all along the way, even on I-5 in the remote Central Valley. A drive that could take just under 4 hours with no traffic and no stops will likely be 6 hours tonight. So I anticipate we'll get to our hotel room around 1am and I won't be able to wind down for sleep until closer to 2. 😖 That's kind of the deal with Friday Night Halfway, though. Especially when we push it to Friday Night 77% of the Way There.

But again, there's an upside to the late hour and having to be in Bakersfield. Aside from the fact that most of my time in Bakersfield will be spent unconscious, I mean. In the morning we should have an easy drive to the park, leaving more time and energy available for hiking. Should. We'll see how it goes.


Update: Good news, bad news (mostly good news) in Bakersfield


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