I must say every time I would drive from Florida to San Diego, CA.... I remember how daunting the moonscape, mountains, desert, and grade changes were; especially when you would see signs like, " no gas stations for 100 miles...make sure your radiator and engine are working properly and that you have enough coolant. At one point they kind of hinted that if you broke down ...especially in winter....not too many cars or traffic will be coming by. You had better have alot of h2o blankets and food onboard...this part and Arizona. we're very hot and dry in the summer...signs also warned you about overheating... but once you got closer to San Diego...you hit farms and agriculture...and then those sloping mountains. I was ready for a rock avalanche in a few areas. keep filming...you are doing wonderful!
Great video! It's amazing how close I-8 gets with the Mexican border. I'm sure it's a special treat going eastbound as well! Keep up the great work, as always, Jim! -Alex
I miss I-8 quite a bit since I was originally from San Diego. One cool tidbit about I-8 is that the lowest elevation on any interstate is on I-8 just before heading into the mountains (New River just before Seeley). The scenery is quite an awesome contrast from the Pacific Ocean to the sand dunes of the Colorado Desert before Yuma. It is quite an excellent video to see this excellent beginning to the majesty of southern CA.
VERY nice ride! And agreed, the area looked like a moonscape but a very nice one at that- and made for nice scenery if you will! Very nice vid- can't wait to see your SD video as SD is one of my favorite cities having had the priveledge to visit it 25 years ago today for a few days while in California! Very nice ride- always good to see freeways with nice scenery and a great tune to go with it! Thanks for introducing me to Joe Satriani through your vids!
Again, thanks for a great ride, Jim. The music fits the scenery very well. One of these days you need to do this eastbound so you can experience going down the In-Ko-Pah grade.
Thanks for posting this. The first time I ever drove this I was just stunned at all the varied landscapes along the entire length of I-8 from I-10 all the way to I-5. Such a remarkable stretch of highway. The section you show here is my favorite and I remember thinking to myself, wow, this looks like the surface of the moon! That view where you see the mountains ahead after you've been coasting across the wide open valley is a dramatic one. I think there's a short stretch where the westsbound lanes cross over the eastbound and then back again, too. Great video. I think I've driven on this road 4 or 5 times and I still love it every time.
Lambs everywhere love this video. We have watched the Barbiepoledancer video of I-8 from Casa Grande AZ to San Diego, but it was not filmed in HD (she did not have a HD camcorder) and since lambs have bad eyes, this helps to fill in some of the blanks.
Freewayjim, the next time you are in that area, go a few miles south of the border and check out the La Rumorosa toll road between Tecate and Mexicali in Baja California.
Totally agree! Federal Highway 2 traverses roughly the same area. It's a 4-lane controlled-access highway as well, but the grades are steeper and the scenery is way more spectacular!
Freewayjim I LIKED THE MUSIC AND THE VIDEO!!!! THE MOUNTAIN IS TAKING H-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-IGH INTO A 3,000 STEEP SLOPE GOING L-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-OW..... The music was perfect for this mountain. We should call it Freewayjim Mountain. Home of the 3,000 Foot Mountain of Adventure! Can't wait for San Diego!!!!!!!!! Have a blessed day Freewayjim!
Good gracious, every time I think I've seen your best video, I catch the next one even more impressive. Love the high elevation scenery and the downward grade ride. (GVJ) Great Video Jim!
Its cool to see the old concrete road when driving up the grade. The old windy road must have been 30 MPH tops. I bet that was a LONG drive back in the 50s.
Windmills, killer landscapes, humongous distance between eastbound and westbound lanes and an unforgiving sun...oh my! Plus as an added feature, great music. Very good, my friend. Very good.
Awesome! I think that scenery is beautiful (I'm used to Florida flat with greenery blocking most of your side vision)... and your choice of music really set it off nicely!
One idea I have had regarding I-8 and I-10 between California and Arizona, involves extending I-20 to Los Angeles. * I-20 would follow I- 10 to Lordsburg, NM then would follow US 70 to Globe AZ and US 60 from Globe to Phoenix. * I-20 would replace I-10 west of Phoenix. * The section of I-10 from I-5 to CA- 60 near Palm Springs would follow a more direct routing along CA- 60. * I-10 In Metro LA west of Downtown LA would become I-420. The western terminus of i-420 would be US 101 in downtown LA. * I-110, I-210, and I-710 would be renumbered I-120, I-220 and I-720 respectively. * I-8 would be clenched and replaced by the new I-10. * The Santa Monica Freeway would be widened and upgraded it terminus would be reconstructed to resemble its GTA 5 counterpart.
ROCK ON, JOE! As always no FreewayJim season's complete without at least one of his songs; and good to know that he just released a new album. Also, I have never seen such a wide gap on the Interstate system. We've only got a few here in New England; the longest one I've seen is currently on I-93 in Windham, NH.
benlonghighway Thank you, the widest gap I had ever seen was about a mile on I-24 at Monteagle in Tennessee, the road in this video is quite a ride all the way in to San Diego, thanks for watching!
Terrific ride! Another ride that I highly recommend is US 30 through the mountains - from Breezewood to Chambersburg (40 miles). You go through scenic Fulton and Franklin County - I like that ride.
Multiblue Blanket Thanks, there are some nice rides in the east but they can't compare to the roads out west (I'm a NH native who used to think I-93 through Franconia Notch was all that...wrong).
Nash wayz Thank you Nash, it's a really good album, used a couple of the songs in an upcoming San Francisco video. The light was tough to deal with but I did the best I could with it.
FREAKIN' AWESOME! Wish I could drive I-8 through this area a lot more often, but it's not a stretch of road that I ever have a real reason to drive, and it's just a little too far from where I live for me to drive it on the regular, "just because." I think it's been 5 years since I last drove this stretch. Such an amazing landscape...had no idea Mr. Santriani was still putting out brand new songs. Great song choice. Definitely going on the favorites list.
looking at maps i used to be confused as to why I-8 and 19 weren't the same route with concurrency along I-10, but perhaps 60 miles is a bit much concurrency for these major routes outside of any metro anyways doesn't seem to me like theres any use now considering the resigning that would be necessary
WWWOOOOOWWWWWW,,,,,,AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWAWAWAWAW...AWESOME..... What was Thaaaatt..? That's some of the sickest shit I've ever heard. Where,,, where do you get it Jim... Daammm...I mean Goddamn Saddamn Rotterdaamnn Amsterdaammn
@@Freewayjim Yeah, I know; but you could please a broader segment that you did this time! 🙂 I usually just put up with it, but when you subject me to something as awful as Satriani's screechings, I'm gonna squeal about it. I enjoy your videos, by the way. Peace!
@@MikeV8652 Sorry you don't like elite guitar work (would love to know who you think is great), it's OK not everyone does, but I use a wider variety of music than other road video producer (would you prefer dance/electronic music 100% of the time?) so it is what it is, not everyone will like every song, I get it. Finding the right song is challenging, the copyright minefield alone kills many good ideas so I use what I feel works and I think I have a pretty good track record. Remember it's not about preference, it's about what works with the footage at hand.
Not everybody likes a thing, and some people just like to be contrarian. I rarely give thumbs down to videos because if I can tell it's something I'm not going to like, I don't watch it anyway. But sometimes a video fails to meet expectations (read: clickbait that fools you into watching a video you wouldn't otherwise, or was just badly made). This video delivers exactly what it promises, so not sure what someone would be disappointed enough to thumb it down, but well, no accounting for taste; again, not everyone likes the same things. (For the record I gave it a thumbs up.)
