You can't get this in LA.

Interstate 5 is the main artery between Northern California and its southern counterpart. It is the most direct route to Stockton from Los Angeles. It is also one of the most boring six hour drives in America. For three hundred miles, there is nothing but brown grass and the occasional cow sitting forlorn on the landscape. Usually I find myself looking forward to the next “__ miles until Rest Area” signs; they were the only things to break up the monotony of the view.

However, there’s a tiny window of time, between the drowning rains of March and the scorching heat of May, when I-5 gleams. Mustard grows wild in stretches miles long, and the yellow looks like a thick blanket. Bushes grow thick and tall; in two months they'll be tumbleweeds, but for now they stand pretty. Roaming gangs of sheep and steer loiter at leisure in the fields and cherry tree orchards, nipping at a grass blade here, a bloom there.

There was a moment while I was driving, when everyone else in the car had fallen asleep. The sun made natural spotlights in between the clouds, and the mist made the hills look lush. I crested a hill and out of nowhere a herd of shorn sheep glowing white against the green came into view. I stared for a good two seconds, then the car whizzed by and the entire scene dropped out of view. I turned and "Hey, did you see tha-?" and realized that our car was the only car on the road, and I was the only conscious person in the car. It may have been the most perfect thing I have ever seen, and I was alone. It made me feel like that section of I-5 was put there just for me.


Even through a dusty windshield on a cell phone camera, you can see the clouds forever. You can't get this in LA.