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San Juan Bautista to King City, 13 April, 2009

It's 64 miles between San Juan Bautista and King City if you stay on Highway 101. It's an okay route, taking you past the bustling metropoli of Salinas, Soledad, Chualar, and Greenfield before finally arriving at the oasis of freeway gas stations and fast food joints visible in King City. On the other hand, if you veer off the freeway at San Juan Bautista (home of one of the California Missions) and head to Hollister (site of the 1947 biker shindig that was documented in "The Wild One"), you'll be able to enjoy another one of the state's best drives. And the kicker is that this route adds a mere four miles to the length of the otherwise dullsville drive down the 101. 

I stopped in Hollister to make some phone calls and noticed that my car had reached a mileage semi-milestone: 

There's something about documenting the mileage numbers that end in a lot of zeroes that I don't know why they're more important than random numbers, but here it is. What it does remind me of is the fact that I've got 2K left on the warranty, so if anything big is going to break, I hope it happens real soon. 

Heading south out of Hollister is CA 25 (also listed as the Airline Highway), a two-lane road that attracts lots of motorcycle riders and probably a lot of CHP officers on the weekends but is very open at 9:30 on a Monday morning. On the entire stretch I encountered four cars, and the road's long straights and broad vistas make passing very easy to accomplish. Just past the County Fairgrounds, I passed some extensive vineyard plantings. 

San Benito County has always been the home (at least in my mind) of smaller, boutique producers such as Calera and Enz Vineyards, but in reality, it was at one time home to Almaden, one of the state's more influential wineries in the last century. This vineyard in Paicines is now owned by Diageo, having purchased it from whoever owned it before Heublein, who bought it from Almaden. I shouldn't have been surprised, as the area was once the source of much of the fruit that went into Almaden wines, so the fountain of juice coming from this 700 acre vineyard and into bottles of Sterling and BV has some historical precedent in addition to its medicinal use. The other wineries in the area are up off the valley floor and aren't visible from the road (or I just wasn't paying any attention).

Heading further south from the vineyards you pass the Pinnacles National Monument, some impressive looking rocks, on the other side of which are the original vineyard plantings of Chalone, as well as Michael Michaud's winery. Here the road starts to open up even more, with long-range views of the road up ahead, set among vast meadows and plains. 

The quality of the pavement is pretty good, and with the great view and empty roads, there's a slight tendency to hit the accelerator pedal pretty hard. There are few sharp curves and the two-lane road is wide enough to accommodate just about any car that can attain any speed. I'd like to think that this is the sort of road that an older 12-cylinder Ferrari was designed for. 

The turnoff heading toward King City takes you up and over the hill, with a marvelous view once you get up to the top:

After some easy twisties in the hill, it's a gradual drop into King City, a town that's based around agriculture. 

I stopped for gas and headed toward my Santa Maria meeting on 101. It was an exceptional morning of driving, definitely removing the "just a commuter" aspect from the journey. 

Skyline Therapy, 13 April, 2009

I had an amazing trip yesterday morning from Petaluma down to Malibu. It was incredible not only for the driving but for the spring scenery, my favorite season in California.

I left Petaluma around 6 AM. The sun was just coming up and there was very little traffic all the way into San Francisco. the Golden Gate bridge this early in the morning is a wondrous sight, all the more so when it's almost devoid of other cars. 

Not having anything set up until a noon appointment in Santa Maria, I took 25th street through San Francisco, down past UCSF to 280. The radio station was talking about all sorts of mayhem occurring on the other freeways, but things were definitely going my way as I went down the peninsula and took the turnoff for Skyline Boulevard, or State Route 35. This one of the state's finest roads to drive, particularly early in the morning when the lack of school busses, bicyclists, county sheriffs, and tourists makes it possible to open open it up a bit. 

Once leaving 280, the trip along Skyline is about 35 miles of pure enjoyment until you've reached Highway 17 and you descend into Los Gatos and onto 85 toward Gilroy. This is an excruciatingly beautiful route, with lots of twisting curves through a redwood forest, occasionally broken up by broad vistas overlooking the entire southern part of the SF bay. There were patches of fog to heighten the driving experience and taking this detour (it's a mere 30 miles if you were to stay on the 280) was a very relaxing experience.

There's something definitely therapeutic about spirited driving (that's what they call it in the car magazines, right?) in a VW R32 on an empty road and under ideal conditions. Skyline is fairly wide and with excellent sightlines, at least until you get a little past Big Basin Road, at which point it narrows to about a lane and-a-half (watch out for slow-moving garbage trucks!) and the sharp corners start to come about every 50 feet. The houses along this stretch seem to be owned either by old hippies or by dot.com moguls (not that the two groups are mutually exclusive) but it seems like it's a part of town where you live if you don't thrive on dealing with civilization often. Following Skyline all the way to Black Road, I made it down to Highway 17 by a little before 8 AM. Twisty, curvy, and downhill...driving doesn't get much better than this (a GPS might have come in handy though).