A buddy of mine and I took 2 days to tour central CA. He has a BMW 330i and I drove my 2007 350Z. He left SF and I left LA , then met in San Luis Obispo. The original route called for running Rt. 58 East, then through Taft, then 166 West back to San Luis Obsipo. However, a large forest fire left us in Taft with few options except return on Rt. 58 or go home via I-5. The ash from the fire was falling on our cars somewhere around Maricopa, so that's when we called the drive off and headed home - Rt. 166 was too close to the fires. The red sky is smoke-filled sky from the fires.
We had a great run on 58 with incredible twisties, straight run desert sprints and some cool sights at Soda lake and a ton of oil pumps. Taft is apparently home to some huge oil deposits.
The Z was reliable, comfortable (for the most part) and fast.
Here are some photos.

 

Wow you could definitely see the smoke in the air

 

Omg its like a scene straight out of terminator 2 and thats the terminators bike on the right. RUN!!!!!!!

 

haha. looks like you guys had fun.

 

how fast did u get up to?

on those roads...i can only guess...

 

how many miles was the trip? looks great

 

Interesting trip. Glad the Z did you well.

 

Nice trip you guys took. Are the fires bad out there?

Chris

 

dude.. thats some cool pic's.. looks like it was a great ride...

 

The fires out ere can get pretty bad. I can't remember the exact #, but many thousands of acres are burning right now in these mountains. These kinds of drives are a lot of fun - you get away, you see some new scenery, you put the car through some spirited driving on some excellent roads-it's all good. The desert flats offer flat as a pancake, straight as an arrow stretches. I don't know exactly how fast we went, but it was certainly fast enough. More pix, this time from my friends camera.

For some reason, Photobucket throws these together backwards in sequence, but you get the idea

 

looks like a good time. Nice pics

 

man sounds like you had a blast! Wish I could do that

 

Nice pics!

 

very nice photos man