California Highway 101 in Reseda is east of downtown Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley. On most afternoons, you'll find Interstate Highway 101 a busily trafficked highway. Even though this road that's 10 lanes or so of paved ribbon winds and curves, it sometimes comes to a complete stop so you can sit and absorb the surroundings. Unfortunately they are not very exciting in this elevated platform that hardly offer views of much more than the sides of buildings.

Reseda, known as one of L.A.'s first suburbs in the San Fernando Valley, is mostly residential.  Summers are quite warm because of the inland location. Pacific Ocean breezes are blocked from arriving in the valley because of the Santa Monica mountains that line the western perimeter of the city. This dry, often sunny place often can miss the coastal fog.

Boogie Nights, Magnolia, The Karate Kid and Erin Brockovich have all contained scenes with location shoots in Reseda. Another claim to fame is the Northridge Earthquake of 1994 that actually had its epicenter in Reseda.

For travelers passing through to either the Central Coast, Carmel, San Francisco, Redwood Coast or onto Oregon will find this one of the toughest stretches for traffic. Once you get beyond it, you won't necessarily have clear sailing for quite some time.   After you escape the Valley and head into Calabasas, Thousand Oaks and down the Conejo Grade into Camarillo, the once-smooth trek often is slow, even though two additional lanes on the 101 were constructed in Oxnard.  The cities are just building too many houses, and there are too many people, minus useful public transportation connecting these spots in the foreseeable future.  Some of our friends in L.A. or Orange County who used to commute, eventually packed up and moved closer to their offices in the valley and further west. If you seek optimal times to pass through here to avoid traffic delays, it's a crap shoot.  But you can try times from around 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., then after 8 p.m. at night and before 6 a.m.

The red car on the map is located in the vicinity of the photo location shown in the picture above.