Where (state/city) you were driving would help a lot. It has the general appearance of a camphor tree, but with so little to go on...

It's in Rocklin, CA...a suburb of Sacramento pretty much.

There are camphor trees, some rather old, growing in Sacramento. So it is a possibility.

Kinda like this one?

http://www.alhambragroup.net/trees/camphor.html

Although it doesn't look like other photos of Camphor Trees that come up when I search. Hmm...

lol A distant shot isn't a whole lot to work with, you know! I'm working with what I can see--a close up of the leaves would helped. What I am matching up is that camphor trees generally have their foliage towards the end of the branches, with rather bare branches below. The spring foliage color is fairly similar; they get some nice reddish leaves later on, so they don't tend to appear as monochromatic later in the season. They have similar bark to the tree in your photo. I think it resembles the camphor in this photo, but the id guess is just an impression I get from the tree in your photo, not a definitive id.

Ya I didn't want to freak out the people that live there by getting out of my car and taking pics of their yard. LOL

It would freak me out more to have someone take photos from a car across the road than to be openly standing outside and clearly interested in the tree rather than my front door. Looks like a covert spying operation from a car!

If that tree was in my part of the world, I would say it has been mal-pruned. "Lion's tailing", the practice of stripping off all foliage, stems, and branchlets save for a tuft on the branch ends is a long-known poor practice. That is what this tree appears to have had done to it. IF camphor tree somehow does this to itself, so be it, but that would be a new one on me.