The trek through the central valley was rather unpicturesque. Vast open spaces where cattle graze. First west along Hwy 4, then south down a ranchers’ backroad, county road J14 to J16 to Hwy 165… We lunched in Oakdale, at a cheap and tasty Mexican cantina, then continued south through Turlock, down to Los Banos. The most memorable elements of this flat straight trek are the unvarying stink from the cow pens by the road side, and, closer to Los Banos, riding through the undisturbed wetlands of a small national wildlife reserve.
At Los Banos we picked up Hwy 33 west where it merges with Hwy 152 in the direction of Hollister. Hwy 152, running over the Pacheco Pass, is a great stretch of road, as super-slab goes. 4 lanes with a 70mph speed limit gently rise into the hills that border the valley to the east of San Jose. The road winds past the San Luis Reservoir, a long stretch of submerged valley that sits oddly among the rolling hills south of the highway. On the western side of the hills the road winds on, descending into the fruit orchards of the Santa Clara valley.
From a point half way up to the summit, this is at the western end of the reservoir:
At the same picture spot, facing the opposite direciton to the north, the hills have a warm glow in the late afternoon:
We rode into Hollister after 4:00pm. This was going to be a long day’s journey, since we still had 100+ miles of smaller roads between us and Paso Robles, and we’d already been on the road 5-1/2 hours. We stopped in Hollister for a coffee break, then picked up the wonderful Highway 25 to wind our way south.
An early evening shot not too far from Tres Pinos, along Hwy 25:
Across the road, they’re growing… hmm. We couldn’t decide if they planned to harvest lightning or were just growing aluminum:
In an effort to keep this report under 10,000 words :gotcha … I won’t expand on the journey over Hwy 25 and the cut-off to King City that we reached as the sun was disappearing. We’re looking at this as a lesson learned, since we didn’t expect to be getting to our destination after sunset, and we weren’t prepared for the COLD temps on the highway. Exploring side roads by night is not the most pleasurable experience. Blind curves become pained exercises in snail’s pace entry speeds, with uphill rises into black nothingness taken at about a third of the actual safe speed. Needless to say, the ride on County road G13 between Hwy 25 and Hwy 101 was slow going and chilly, far beyond the limits of comfort. Setting out Saturday morning we hadn’t intended to take 101 south to Paso Robles, but we couldn’t take our preferred twisty route in complete darkness (more about that route later, which we did manage to take on Sunday on our return trip).
Hwy 101 was another learning experience. Donna’s gloves were not winter-strength and her hands numbed up a few miles into the 50-mile ride to Paso Robles. To make matters worse, Donna wears glasses and her view in the darkness was frequently limited to the glare that oncoming headlights were reflecting in her glasses. The reflection was mirrored on the inside of her visor, providing a view of her own glasses instead of a clear picture of the road! This first “over-nighter” was yielding more lessons than we’d bargained for!
