Recap - Central Valley Backroads Run - November 15, 2020
Your Hosts: Dolores and Rick Sanchez
Manteca was very foggy on this Sunday morning. The Tule fog was in full force. Dolores and I arrived at the Wendy’s Parking Lot around 8:50 am. Lou Smaldino and his daughter, Gina, were the first ones there. They came all the way from Vacaville! We had the members park behind the adjacent Valero Gas Station which was more convenient for when it came time to leave the parking lot. (It also turned out to be convenient for those that needed a bio break prior to our departure.) While we waited for more drivers to arrive, the fog slowly started to burn off.
As Dolores checked in members, I had the opportunity to talk to Yvette Welch. She shared about her bad luck getting her blue Mini dinged by others on various occasions. I also chatted with Khalil Mariani as he worked on getting his GoPro installed on his antenna bracket. Slowly one, by one our members started to trickle into the parking lot. Larry Anderson, Gary Chin, Ed Gauci and Randy Sanchez (no relation) arrived around 9 am. Mary Wolgamot, Sondra Westphal and Greg Seeno rounded out the members that joined us for this event.
We had our drivers meeting at 9:45 am as planned. By this time the fog was completely gone and we had a nice clear sunny day to start our run.
We left the parking lot around 10 am. Because we were a small group of 11 cars, we were able to pretty much stay together. Larry was kind enough to volunteer to be the caboose for this run. As we headed north on Jack Tone Road for 14 miles, there were about 5 stop signs along the way, which kept our speeds at the speed limit. We did regroup before we made our right turn onto Highway 26 to Linden. Once we arrived at Clements Road, which was a 10-mile stretch going northbound, we informed the group that we would pick up the pace as there were NO STOP SIGNS on this road (weee!)
We regrouped again at the end of Clements Road to allow the rest of the group to catch up. We eventually made our way into a T-intersection in downtown Ione. After a quick drive through town, we were back on the Highway 124N. Again, we had an 8 mile stretch of no stop signs and we picked up the pace until we arrived at the Highway 16E/Highway 49N intersection.
This 14 mile stretch of Highway 49 took us into the town of Plymouth. After we reached a roundabout in town, we eventually hit a stretch of road with some twisties. We did see a CHP on the side of the road, but he did not follow us.
From Highway 49 we made a right turn onto Pleasant Valley Road (Highway 49). We drove through the historic town of Diamond Springs which was rich with gold back in the day. A 25 lb. gold nugget was found in this area back during the gold rush years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Springs,_California
Upon making a left turn to continue onto Highway 49 N, we drove for another 3 miles before reaching Main Street in downtown Placerville. The run took us around 2 hours with our multiple regroups, but it was a nice scenic run. The weather couldn’t have been better.
We hope that everyone had a nice time and were able to enjoy visiting Placerville or the apple farms in Apple Hill.
Rick and Dolores Sanchez