Please allow me to introduce myself.

Thursday, July 14th, 2016 1:40 am

    Starting when I was young kid, my family would always take road trips from our home in Suisun City, Ca to the coast. Fort Bragg; specifically the glass beach at the end of Elm St., was usually our destination and we went often and always had a great time. We would spend hours exploring the rock caves at low tide, searching for anemones and all other kinds sea creatures living in the tide pools.

    To this day I am still fascinated by the rocky beaches and the waves of the Pacific ocean and consider it to be a spiritual or enlightened moment every time I have the privilege to stand at the edge of the land staring out over the crashing waves...That being said, the more trips I made to the coast, I began enjoying the journey required to get there just as much as actually being at the beach. My step-dad, California Road Atlas in hand and his “Freedom Rock” cassette in the tape deck, rarely took the same route to the coast and because of that we ended up seeing some pretty cool scenery and driving across some remote, rarely traveled back roads. One trip in particular has always stood out in my mind and is still a common topic of conversation in my family.

    Around the time that I was 9 or 10 years old (1993 or 1994) my mom, my step-dad, my older brother and myself piled into our 1991 Toyota Camry and took a summer trip to the coast. We had turned off of highway 1 somewhere near Jenner; most likely Meyer’s Grade Rd., but at that age I doubt that I ever knew or even paid attention to what roads we were on. Somewhere in the the winding roads of the coast range my step-dad took a wrong turn and we were lost and totally confused about where we were. We drove aimlessly for what was probably a couple of hours trying to find our way back down to the coast and that ended up being one of the best trips and we all had a great time. Driving up one of those roads, we came across what we believe to be a couple of temples or something similar and have always wondered what those gold-dome topped buildings hiding behind the trees really were. We finally did find our way back down to highway 1 down a winding, one lane dirt road (that I now know to be Kruse Ranch Rd.), through Plantation farm camp and down through Kruse Rhododendron state park. About a half mile from highway 1 we noticed a trail-head and decided to stop and take a hike and stretch our legs. The trail we took is called Chinese Gulch trail. It winds it’s way up the side of a hill and is lined with moss covered redwoods whose trunks haven’t felt the light of the sun in many years...but I’ll talk more of Chinese Gulch trail in one of my first entries.

    The reason I tell that story is actually the mysterious temples I mentioned us “finding” (we really just caught glimpses of them through the trees). I was searching a while back trying to locate Chinese Gulch trail, and once I did I instantly had a deep urge to further explore the mountain roads to find those ‘temples’ again just to answer the question of what they are and where they are. I don’t think anybody but myself, my mom, my brother and my fiance who takes these trips with me now, would care or even understand how much I want to figure it all out, but it has stayed with me since day one. I will continue searching like a kid trying to remember where he buried his jar of pennies (Like that Stand By Me reference? lol) until I find what I am looking for or run out of places to look.

    The experiences I have had driving the back roads near Jenner, Cazadero and Fort Ross have inspired me to spend more time on the journey to the coast and I have had some great times exploring the back roads of Napa County, Sonoma County, Mendocino County (and soon to add Humboldt County to that list) and I want to share a little of that joy with anyone willing to endure my poor writing, and mediocre at best cell phone photography.

    So I jumped on Google and searched ‘how to start a blog’ and that brings us here…

My name is Tim Drake

This is my backroads blog.

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