oh dear. this brings back painful memories. a couple years ago i drove from cali to illinois. starting out it was all nice and beautiful in cali. all this lush green and drizzling rain. then i crossed the mountains into nevada. well everything went to shit there and it never got better. 3 days of dry, repetitive terrain
i was quite impressed with nevada, not so much with wyoming: got stranded there for 3 days due to a total white out, and thought i was going to end up in the ditch for sure. turns out that traveling 80 in early January isn't the best of ideas.
in short, if you live in california, stay there