US Route 395

The Inside Passage

From Lake Tahoe we could have gone south through Sacramento and any number of cities between the Sierra Nevada range and the Pacific Ocean, but once you've driven the California freeways you really don't need to do it again - and we have really had our fill of them on this trip.

Instead, we chose to drive down the other side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range, down US 395. This highway more or less follows the California/Nevada boundary. I had read that it would be an interesting drive.

Leaving Lake Tahoe we backtracked from California to Nevada for two reasons - 1) a better route back down to US 395, and 2) the price of gasoline in Nevada was $3.39 instead of the the California price of $3.89. That half dollar adds up when you're talking 50 gallons.

The first 45 minutes got us back to US 395 in Minden, Nevada, where we filled the tank. For the next 3 hours we drove a little over 100 miles on mountain roads - some two lane, some four lane, but mountain roads nonetheless. That proved to be a miscalculation on my part as we still had about 270 miles to go to reach Barstow.

After a serious drop in elevation in just a short drive, we continued south on this section of US 395.

The eastern side of the Sierra Nevada range.

More of the same.

By my calculation we would arrive in Barstow at about 7:00. We had wanted to get there before dark and started getting concerned when we lost the sun at a little after 5:00. But we were on the eastern side of the mountains, and after we cleared the mountains at 5:30 we were in sunlight again. When we reached the campground at 7:00 we had just enough light to set up camp.

Tomorrow we continue to Flagstaff, Arizona.