Your seismic adventure today may be part of a much bigger picture.
The Pacific plate (PA) moves NNE relative to the North American plate (NA) at ~5 cm/yr on average. For the last 10 million years or so, most of that relative motion has been concentrated along the San Andreas fault (SAF). And most of it comes in jumps experienced as earthquakes rather than in a steady creep.
But in the process, the once-straight SAF has been growing a series of kinks that make it less and less suited to that role. Sooner or later, the SAF will have to be abandoned as the main locus of PA-NA motion.
There's some evidence that the transition's already underway, and that the SAF's successor is coming together along the east side of the Sierra Nevada -- especially near the range's southern end. Today's Ridgecrest quake, and the other big shocks in the area over the last decade, are consistent with that scenario.
Ditto for the 1992 M7.3 Landers event. I happened to be in Joshua Tree ~20 km from the Landers epicenter at the time. Rode that one out in the desert outside my motel in my undies with no shoes. Whee doggies! What a ride!