Mountain House

On May 7 I wrote that I was tempted to drink the keg the night before but I had a can in my bag so drank that instead and went to bed late.

In the morning of the day that I wrote this I woke at six and managed to get coffee after the café opened. I drank 2 cups and woke up before I paid my bill and packed my room to go. Then I rode to the tracks and started on my walk to Cloverdale along the NWPRR.

I went under the freeway, passed through a vineyard and walked an orchard path parallel to the tracks. I decided to walk for the most part, dragging my bike along. The going was hard.

As Mountain House separated from the track, the landscape became a bit wild but then I approached a couple houses as the road and tracks came back together. Most of the crossings were dead ends but they sometimes had stop signs. Some man at the red barn said hi from his truck.

After that all the crossings became locked gates, one of which I crossed near the last Mountain House Road access (near 17301). I happened upon a rattlesnake there and that really worried me. As the rails followed the river, I took a nameless dirt road on the track’s south side which was not on the map but is visible in the satellite imagery. It was clearly used by cattle and traversed the cliffs between the river and a mountain to the south, which doesn’t have a name but it is attached to the Forest Ranch property.

The path was useful but I ended up too far from the track so I crossed the large riverside field to the north to get back on the track. Here the track was blown out, overgrown and was difficult to impossible to traverse. There was a vineyard on one side at some point but it was inaccessible behind barbed wire and dense foliage. I could see workers in the field – the map indicated that they came in via a pontoon bridge.

I saw a second rattlesnake then. I was covered with bushes and leaves. I also was really nervous. However, from here I had only a short distance to Tunnel Nine. So, I pushed through despite the risk and the tunnel appeared almost immediately. I walked right through.

On the far side the track was way easy but this only compounded my worry about Tunnel Eight beneath Frog Woman Mountain. Amazingly, when I got there it was also easy and I made it through. For both tunnels, the bore made seeing light at the other end easier when viewed from the northern end.

From there I was able to Tweet again. I walked quickly to Commiskey Creek, where I had to back track because I went the wrong way crossing the river. The 101 turned out to be an OK bike ride. From Echo Valley Road, I rode up Geysers road to the RV park but sadly they had no water.

I ended the day at Pick’s Drive-in where I had a sandwich. After that I started writing at my hotel with plans to go to The Sawmill.

I copied this from my notebook on 050722.This is an occasional series chronicling my life. This Notebook Analysis series is meant to be contemporaneous piece developed as an agglomeration of my notebook pages. In each of these posts I used my notes to develop my recent thoughts.