Colorado To California

It started with finding this gorgeous but rare 1979 F150 short bed automatic in Aurora, Colorado. Wasn’t sure if I really wanted to make that trip given that I live in Fresno, CA, a 40+ hour round trip. I also wasn’t sure if I wanted a transportation company to just bring it. Or the last option was fly out there and drive it back. That’s exactly what me and my cousin (practically brother) did. We flew from San Jose International Airport on a Thursday afternoon to the Denver Airport. Getting to the hotel was a mission since we could not figure out how to get out of the Denver Airport, since it was so big. After our flight got delayed due to a storm in Denver, and struggling to get out of the airport we finally made it to the hotel.

I had spoke to the seller we were going to meet at his house around 7am. So with hardly any sleep, I got an Uber to take us to his house. I had never done this, let alone in a different state. I was nervous, anxious, but mostly excited, since this has been my dream truck since I was in high school. We test drove it and wanted to see if it was worth making the 20+ hour trip back home. Me and my cousin agreed it was worth drive it. Without spending any more time we closed the deal, got the truck and drove to the nearest auto part store to get spare parts, a gas tank, a tool box, and other miscellaneous items that would help us through the trip.

This truck has a 460 and is sitting on 35″ in tires, so I knew it was going to go through gas like crazy, and on top of that it has an aftermarket 40 gallon tank. So it was fun for my wallet filling the tank.

We started driving on Highway 70 West at around 12 am. To start off, we realized the gas gage wasn’t reading well after pumping our very first tank, great. We were going to have to stop at many gas stations and figure out how many miles we would get per tank.  We had to take into consideration all the hills we were getting.

Overall, the trip took us 21 hours. We drove nonstop through Colorado, Utah, and Nevada.  Our first 12 hours was rough, since I was nervous as hell thinking any little weird sound was the truck about to give out. My cousin had more faith than I did the whole trip, so that definitely helped. We stopped at a really amazing restaurant somewhere in Colorado and we both ordered the house calzone, it was AMAZING!!! At every gas stationed we stopped we got snacks, drinks and anything else to keep us awake. We passed all Utah at night, so sight seeing wasn’t much fun, but we were still able to catch a glimpse of the flat top mountains there. Somewhere almost getting out of Utah, we go a storm and we freaked out because we did not test out the wipers, to our luck the wipers worked. We passed through Las Vegas also at night, so the strip was something I had not yet seen. Once passing Las Vegas, we were 5 hours away from home so I started feeling a lot more calm, thinking to myself “ok we made it”.

Overall, the trip was a great experience with my cousin, would probably do it again but with a much newer vehicle. Got many plans for this 1979. Can’t wait to start driving it!!!