Beckwourth Pass (Day 3)
The place I was staying at in Bucks Lake — Haskins Valley Inn — is owned and operated by two very entertaining women. Each of the bedrooms is beautifully decorated and very comfortable. I don’t normally eat breakfast — have to reserve calories for all the snacking I do after dinner 🙂 — but what was on offer looked and smelled so great I just had to partake. And I’m glad I did!
The Inn also has a beautiful backyard. It was very peaceful sitting there in the afternoon, relaxing and watching the quaking aspen move in the breeze.
I left Bucks Lake around 9:30 AM and arrived at Bridgehead, near Antioch, around 1:30 PM. Which meant I had to hang out in the hotel lobby for an hour and a half waiting for my room to become available. Should’ve stopped to take pictures along the way…but that’s more time-consuming on a motorcycle than you might think. You have to find a safe place to pull over — often in short supply, either because you’re on a (fun!) twisty road or a highway full of cars — and then unpack and repack gear to get at your camera. Besides, a good part of the joy of riding is riding through ever-changing beautiful scenery, not sitting still admiring it.
Speaking of which, coming down out of the mountains was fun! Highway 162 is a great ride — almost all well-paved, nicely banked, and with hardly any traffic on a weekday. At least heading west; there were a lot of people heading up into the mountains, many towing boats. Parts of the route were scarred by the terrible fires of a few years back, but it’s amazing how quickly the underbrush, at least, springs back.
My route also had me discover a great alternative to I-5: CA 70, which while ultimately runs through the Feather River Canyon and ends up at Beckwourth Pass, runs north/south above Sacramento for quite a ways. And is nearly totally devoid of traffic despite being a major divided four-lane highway. It either gets very busy during rush hour, serving the Sacramento suburbs, or some legislator’s vote was needed badly and the result was a massive injection of state funds into highway construction :).
The other main attraction of today’s ride was to go through the Sacramento Delta, something I’d only ever done on I-80. I’m glad I did, because what I saw (and learned) was well worth the extra time it took.
The Delta is gigantic, as befits it being fed by most of California’s rivers. What’s really striking about it as you cruise along the tops of the levees is how on one side, you’ll have a wide river channel…and on the other, square miles of farmland. Which would clearly be under water if the levee wasn’t there.
The levees are the result of both private and public investment. My friend Brian Perkins, who worked for the state of California for many years, told me much of the Delta is covered by agreements which provide access to river water to the farmers…who also have to agree to have their fields act as flood plains when circumstances would otherwise cause the Sacramento and American rivers to flood Sacramento, the state capitol.
I noticed and appreciated all sorts of things as I road through the Delta. Egrets — always solitary ones — stationed at farm waterways, presumably to hunt fish in the channels. Predictably, when it finally occurred to me what a great picture that would make, I didn’t see any more of them (next time!). Narrow bridges with cool counter-weighted sections that could be raised up to allow boat traffic through. Small river towns (at times I thought I was traveling through the Louisiana Bayou…except it wasn’t muggy). Well worth going through at least once, instead of taking I-80.
I also got to ride over a magnificent, giant bridge — the Antioch Bridge1 — in the middle of nowhere. Not sure what port it serves, but it must be a big one. Why build such a tall bridge otherwise? It’s probably Stockton, which is a seaport even though it’s quite far from the ocean (both San Francisco Bay — typically referred to as “the bay” — and San Pablo Bay — the east/west arm of the bay complex — are huge).
Tomorrow sees me getting back home after a brief two-hour ride. Can’t wait to see Barbara — and Moose! — again!
for those who live on the Peninsula, think something as tall as the main span of the San Mateo Hayward Bridge, just not as wide ↩
