San Diego to Santa Barbara - Best way thru/around LA

Having lived and worked right down town L.A. for almost 40 years, I developed techniques to get from A to B with the least resistance. One technique was to travel at completely off hours, which means at night. After about 11 p.m. you can go right through on the 5 with barely a slowdown. There are gas stations suitable for RV's along the way. Just get on gas buddy to see where and what prices. The first thing we did when I retired from the L.A. Philharmonic was to move to the west slope, Northern Sierra Nevada east of Nevada City. Nevada City has nary a stop light. Many stop signs, a few round a bouts, but no lights. Also, no traffic to speak of. It's been 8 yrs. since we moved and any time I HAVE to go back down to L.A. I'm always shocked at how fast everyone drives. The good news is they're all equally aggressive so it's easy to fit in. Not like the bay area where there is a wide splay of driving aggressiveness down to downright timidity. That is much harder to adjust to. Just don't travel in L.A. between 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Do travel on Sunday morning, especially through downtown any time before 1 p.m. Friday between 10 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. was also slightly lighter as far as traffic. I have a 50 year history driving the freeways in L.A. i could sense when the U.S. economy was up or down by estimating the traffic volume. In a down economy, there was a lot less traffic. In boom times the roads were loaded. I went through a lot of ups and downs. My mantra was to always (if i could) swim upstream when everyone else was swimming downstream.
jefe