Day 14: Lone Pine CA -> Paso Robles CA

 One of these Lofty Peaks is Mount Whitney.  Most likely the highest one.

Thee Nissan ov Doom is the one on the right

If you drive back into Lone Pine a bit and then turn right you will find yourself on Whitney Portal Road which - unsurprisingly - goes to Whitney Portal.  This being the trailhead for going to the summit of - yep - Mount Whitney.  The road climbs approximately four and a half thousand feet in ten miles and would make a wik summit finish for a bike race if there was room at the top for all the Stuffs that traditionally accompany such events.  Which there isn't.  Instead there's all this lot:

This 'ere is the Los Angeles Aqueduct, of which we spoke yesterday

On descending I returned to US-395, intending to feed the motor-car with petril at the Chevron on the way out of town, but it didn't like my cards so sod 'em.  So I decided that the Mobil in Olancha would get my custom.  The problem here being that Caltrans has bypassed Olancha with a new bit of the 395 which the satnav doesn't know about and on which the aforementioned Caltrans has utterly failed to put any signs point to, well, Olancha.  Just DETH Valley, which is a hundred miles away.  Anyway, I found it.

On down 395 until there's a fork in the road.  395 wanders off into the desert towards San Bernardino while CA-14 heads right towards LA.  I do not wish to go to LA, but fortunately CA-178 saves me from such a fate and heads over Walker Pass, past loads of Joshua trees and the odd coyote, into the valley of the Kern River towards Bakersfield, past Lake Isabella.

Oh, wait!  Wrong Isabella.  That one is Toby Lee's grilf Isabella Coulstock.

Unfortunately The Man had closed the 178 about 13 miles past the end of said lake, requiring a U-turn and a diversion onto CA-155.  Now CA-155 west of Wofford Heights has more twists and turns than a twisty-turny thing, as well as some steep climbs and equally steep descents.  Which confused thee Nissan ov Doom no end, because instead of a regular automatic gearbox it has a continuously-variable transmission programmed by the pencil-necked desk jockeys at Nissan to imitate regular automatic gearbox.  Which works OK on city streets and motorways but is spectacularly hopeless on a road like CA-155.  Sort it out u muppets!

Finally I got directed onto a different and less twisty-turny road which eventually turned into CA-46, leading straight across the flatlands of California's Central Valley.  This is mostly devoted to agribiz, albeit that large chunks of it seem to be devoted to raising healthy crops of dirt, with a side order of oil.

Nodding donkeys in the Central Valley

And it was stinking hot - like 38 Celsius - and thee Nissan ov Doom unilaterally decided that the speed limit was 85 mph.  Which it isn't.  Nowhere in USAnia save one toll road in Texas has a speed limit that high.  Anyway, I am now in Paso Robles, which is at the centre of a wine-making region and consequently has no milk for sale in containers of less that four pints.  Bah!