The first part of the trip was getting out of Los Angeles. The 134 east out of Glendale moved right along. It usually does.

This is why I usually get off the 210 at Grand in Glendora to bypass the jam. But the 210 was still moving at Grand so I stayed on. Mistake, because it jammed up ahead at Sunflower, so that's where I got off.

This is why you do not want to ever take I-10 through Pomona.

It's the Perpetual Pomona Pileup.

After passing I-15, I-10 moves along a lot better. You parallel the train tracks through this area.

The junction of I-10 and I-215 in San Bernardino.

This is in the Yucaipa area, near the Riverside County line.

This is out to the north of Palm Springs. We're slicing along at 70 MPH, heading SE. Beware of low flying cars.

Finally a near empty highway. The Mercedes, Audis, Volvos and Beamers had already exited for Rancho Mirage or Palm Springs, the people with the offroad vehicles headed south on 86S to the sand dunes at Glamis or other spots, and I-10 just had boaters, truckers, or people headed for Phoenix or elsewhere. The highway is actually below Sea Level here.
The overhead sign reads: "I-10 to Blythe, Phoenix; 86S Expressway to Brawley, El Centro."

I don't know what happened here. The traffic got backed up for about 2 miles and we got squeezed into one lane to get by this wreck. I think it used to be an SUV or station wagon pulling a travel trailer. It was hard to tell at the time. This was on I-10 halfway between Indio and Chiriaco Summit; to be more precise, at mile marker 74, a couple of miles east of the Cactus City rest area and just before the frontage road exit.

Chiriaco Summit, 28 miles east of Indio. There is a cafe here, a gas station, an airport, and several trailers where people live out here. The George Patton museum is here too, which has exhibits about General Patton's WWII desert training facilities at Camp Young (on this site). The museum also has a scale model of the California desert, which was built in the 1920's when they were planning how to build the aqueduct from the Colorado River.

After Chiriaco Summit, it's about 20 miles to Desert Center, which is actually two halfway points. It's halfway from Indio to Blythe, and halfway from Los Angeles to Phoenix. A large aqueduct pumping station is off to the north of here (to the left, out of view here). To the south is Red Cloud Road, where I saw something weird one night out here on another trip.

Somewhere around Desert Center I noticed that there were more cars going west than east (even though eastbound still had more traffic than usual for a Friday evening). The time was 7:00 PM; this was the crowd who'd escaped from Phoenix three hours earlier headed westbound, and they were starting to get out in this area by that time.

As you approach Desert Center, tune your car radio to 106.3 FM. Nothing but empty static until you pass mile marker 103, which is at the sign saying "Hwy 177, Desert Center Rice Road, 1½ miles." Then it suddenly comes to life, with good country music rebroadcast in Blythe from station KNIX in Phoenix. Just 45 miles to go now.

This is Desert Center itself. Somehow, I believe I've managed to fit the entire town into this picture, too. This is where Kaiser's first hospital was started, for the benefit of the Kaiser Mine at Eagle Mountain, and the aqueduct workers in the area. The mine is closed now, but there are plans to turn it into a non-toxic waste repository.
I have a couple more pictures of Desert Center over on this other page.

This is looking northeast. Hwy 177 goes north out there from Desert Center to other places in the desert. It was somewhere out in this area in the 1950's, according to the claims of George Adamski in his book, Flying Saucers Have Landed, that he and several people witnessed the landing of a flying saucer and met a man who was supposedly from Venus.

Related pages:

Quartzsite and on to Phoenix
How to Escape from L.A.
Las Vegas
Laughlin & London Bridge
Yuma

Back to the Roadtrips Page.
Page created June 6, 2000
Last updated October 24, 2000