Road Adventures

Occasionally, I like to take a different route home. Once, when working in Clayton all day, I took Mitchell Canyon Road; it ended up being the first and last time I will take that road (alone at least). It is a one-lane super windy road through the tress; you know, the kind of drive where you expect serial killers to spike the tires on your car and chase you through the woods, then kill you and eat you.

Yesterday, I was working up in Sacramento, and had plans to go to Pittsburg after work. This would be the perfect opportunity for me to go highway 5 to highway 12 to 160 and then link back up to 4 west. Unfortunately, there was a detour in downtown Sac, so I ended up back on 80 west. In Dixon, I decided to hop off 80 and hit 113 south to 12 east and then back onto my originally scheduled route. Things went fine alone 113, which is a nice ride, with lots of open space and grazing sheep, and even some windmills. Highway 12 was a different matter.

I think things would have been fine if I hadn't encountered a literal parking lot about a mile and a half after turning onto highway 12. As it was, I got stopped, here, at the intersection of highway 12 and azevedo road...


I have a google maps application on my phone, so after 5 minutes, I checked to see if Azevedo road cut through somehow, and it appeared to, so I made an illegal u-turn over those double yellow lines you see in the upper left of that image, and turned down the road you see in the upper right. Azevedo Road is gravel, and although the speed limit is 25, I was going slower, so as not to tear up my car too much. I tried to stop an oncoming prius just to make sure that my google maps was correct, but instead of stopping he turned on his headlights; idiot.

A few hundred yards up the road, I saw a rancher in his driveway, so I stopped to talk with him. As I inquired about going around the traffic jam, it started hailing, but he was super nice, and told me he had just heard a siren, and there might be an accident, which explained the backlog of cars. He also said it might just be the bridge (which is a drawbridge). "It's hectic out here in the country, huh?" he joked with a smirk. He told me to go up Azevedo, turn left on Emigh, left on Montezuma Hills, and then take Front Street back to Highway 12. He also informed me that the road was gravel for at least a couple miles, so off I went at a slow 20-mph, but at least I wasn't in traffic anymore.

The rancher's directions were spot on, and I managed to get back to the bridge over the Sacramento River in about 15 minutes, at which point I noted that west-bound 12 was a parking lot as well. I can only assume that I would have been stuck waiting for awhile had I not taken my fun little "detour." Highway 160, which is a road on top of a levee running right next to the river, was a beautiful drive, although I might not drive that one again in the rain.

All-in-all, I enjoyed my scenic route from Sacramento to Pittsburg: good times!