
Drive Times Part II
A few months ago I published a popular blog about the drive times between cities in California during one of my wretched drives from San Diego to Sacramento. I must have gotten 100 responses with various anecdotes and personal travel times, so I thought I’d post on the topic again today.
Yesterday evening my wife, our daughter and I left downtown Sacramento at exactly 3pm… bound for San Diego. There was stop stop and go traffic for a bit in Sacramento and outside of Stockton, but we reached Stockton at 3:45, Modesto at 4:15, and Fresno at 5:30. My average speed was probably 70mph. We stopped at one of the innumerable and ersatz food stops for 15 minutes in Tulare County to grab a burger and jump back in the car. My 2 year old preceded to eat 3/4 of the burger then got a kick out of throwing the rest at the back of my head. Outside of Fresno my speed was closer to 80 or 85mph – we reached Bakersfield at 7:15, 4 hours and 15 minutes after we left Sacramento. Interestingly, I drive a Volvo and I had only used 2/5 a tank of gas at this point.
My next jump was over the Grapevine and along the 5 past downtown LA, which had little traffic. I passed… Read More