San Diego to Santa Barbara - Best way thru/around LA
Looking for best/easiest route thu/around Los Angeles. Coming from San Diego, heading to Santa Barbara. 34' MH with toad. Didn't have much luck with a search. Probably there, couldn't find it.
Forum Discussion
Phil said: "After reading all of these replies, all I can say is "thank goodness I'm not in the LA area!""
Phil, you just can't imagine what traffic is like here. Chokingly dense most of the time. Angry incompetent drivers cutting each other off, zipping in and out of lanes to gain a few seconds. Put your signal on to move over, and folks speed up to prevent you from doing so. Drunks. Criminals. Uninsured folks. Texters. Drunk criminal uninsured texters. Post-apocalyptic crumbling ancient freeways, with chunks of concrete randomly gouged out of the pavement by monster trucks, all tailgating one another at top speed, channeled between cinder block walls smeared with gang graffiti. LIsten carefully to the traffic reports, so that you don't get in the way of a car chase. Not one word of this is an exaggeration.
But the weather is beautiful, almost all the time!
Many years ago, when my sons were pre-teens, we drove from pleasant suburban Orange County into really gritty urban LA, something my kids almost never got to see, We exited the freeway, down onto the "surface streets" to run an errand. My boys looked out the window at the homeless folks pushing shopping carts, the rundown strip malls, the groups of young unemployed men in the liquor store parking lots, and they were thrilled: "It looks just like a movie!! When will we get to see a bank robbery or a car chase?"
So, to bring us back to the thread, this is why we try to leave in the predawn when towing a trailer across the LA basin.
Phil, you just can't imagine what traffic is like here. Chokingly dense most of the time. Angry incompetent drivers cutting each other off, zipping in and out of lanes to gain a few seconds. Put your signal on to move over, and folks speed up to prevent you from doing so. Drunks. Criminals. Uninsured folks. Texters. Drunk criminal uninsured texters. Post-apocalyptic crumbling ancient freeways, with chunks of concrete randomly gouged out of the pavement by monster trucks, all tailgating one another at top speed, channeled between cinder block walls smeared with gang graffiti. LIsten carefully to the traffic reports, so that you don't get in the way of a car chase. Not one word of this is an exaggeration.
But the weather is beautiful, almost all the time!
Many years ago, when my sons were pre-teens, we drove from pleasant suburban Orange County into really gritty urban LA, something my kids almost never got to see, We exited the freeway, down onto the "surface streets" to run an errand. My boys looked out the window at the homeless folks pushing shopping carts, the rundown strip malls, the groups of young unemployed men in the liquor store parking lots, and they were thrilled: "It looks just like a movie!! When will we get to see a bank robbery or a car chase?"
So, to bring us back to the thread, this is why we try to leave in the predawn when towing a trailer across the LA basin.
