That one road.

 I left Sacramento, after a wonderful two days visiting an old friend, hugs, warm company, and feeling sane again.  For the couple days before that I had been camping and hanging out by myself due to my usual family kerfluffel, and I was biting my time on the road.   And although I was headed into the foothills in the direction home that morning, I wanted to take all the time I could, cause home was not exactly where I wanted to go.  I knew that I needed to just get lost on whatever small roads I needed and wanted to explore.  In my usual fashion, I had looked at a map, and looked for places I'd never driven, roads I'd never explored, and that means, traveling into very unknown territory, just to see whats out there.  And even though I've been aware of these places and roads, they're long, slow, windy, and usually not on ones destination routes.  So, I set out to do that on this day.       
     The 16 shoots east out of Sacramento into the Sierra Nevada foothills.  It junctions at a mid point of the 49 highway.  Otherwise known as the Golden Chain Highway, that runs snakily north and south through the Sierra Nevada foothills all the way from the 70 north of Truckee, all the way down to Oakhurst and meets the 41 that takes you into the south entrance of Yosemite.  This Fall I had the honor to ride that the whole way, but today I had new roads to explore.  At the junction of the 16 and 49, there is an almost immediate turn off to a small old town called Amador.  Which is also what the county is was named after.  Now, all the times I'd ridden the 49 I'd never stopped in Amador.  I was like, "why the hell not.  I've got time to burn."  So I made that sudden last minute left into town.  Being as it's a small town with tight roads, I rolled creepily slow up and down all the main streets, peering at all the stores, getting a good feel for the town, flipping u-turns into well labeled dead end driveways.  I was hungry.  But I was looking for something specific.  Something quaint.  And maybe I was being a little too specific, but sometimes you just know what you want.  I sat in my truck on a back street for a sec, idling in the middle of merging streets, like an annoying tourist who doesn't know what they want or where they're going.  That's pretty fitting for me.  I spied an old sign with a rusty name "Pig Turd Alley." It ran along the opposing side of a stream separating it from the backside of the main street stores.  I could only imagine what it used to look like in the hay day of all this towns hustle and bustle.  Despite all the charm and intrigue of the historical town, I decided to keep going. Along I rolled to another small, yet more populous old town called Sutter Creek.  It boasts a longer boulevard, with brighter appeal, more eateries, boutiques, and easy access sidewalks.  Just what I was looking for.  My family came here a few years ago for a Mothers Day breakfast.  This place has a lot of charm, and is characteristically busy.  You bet I stopped.   I had a hankering for some deli sandwich, and I wanted to see what the town could muster for me.  I stopped in the visitor center on Main Street and asked a professional local what the best place to get a sandwich was.  A kind elder man pointed me to a cute small cafe on a corner just down a bit and across the street.  I thanked him for his time, and made an A line for that sandwich.  I had my pick of tables in the place.  So I sat in the right corner window, where I could oversee all the action on Main St.  While I worked through my Turkey on sourdough sandwich, I observed a dozen customers come and go over the course of what was probably an hour.  I was in no hurry.  Mostly had things to work out in my head.
        It was about 2pm when I rolled out of town.  I had someone on my ass, so I pulled over to let them by.  But I had also just seen a sign that said "Daffodil Hill" pointing to a road heading east into the hills.  I thought to myself, "I went there once, years ago with my family, and though I barely remember it, I wanted to see it again, for real, for myself, and check out the road on my own to get there.  And so I turned around and took that road, and off I was to find Daffodil Hill.  I was winding for a while, so much of a while, that I started to doubt the route I was on.  "Did I miss the signs?  Should I turn around?"  I cued up my navigation on my phone, sitting on my speedo dash.  My software doesn't work anymore, so I have to refresh it whenever I question my location.  Daffodil Hill was just up ahead.  It's 13 miles of slow winding remote country foothills, homes on properties sprinkled here and there.  And it's easy to feel like you've been driving forever in the wrong direction.  I was suddenly there.  It was dead of winter, so nothing was blooming, and the sun was in the western setting so the valley was dark, and it felt more like I was back in the dark coastal redwoods.  There would be no wandering the property today.  It was closed.  So where would I go now.  I cued up my map again.  I saw that Volcano was nearby, and in a southerly direction that I was willing to go.  And so I went.
         Volcano was another random small town that I remember being dragged years ago, with some friends.  Back when my friends thought it would be a good idea to live in the middle of nowhere California.  Well, that's Volcano.  Another small mining town, with a history of war and gold.  This time I parked on the side of the road at the stop sign, in front of an old cannon, and I walked around and checked out the buildings.  An old IOOF/Masonic building, an old jail.  An outdoor theater behind the remains of an old building front.  A park dedicated to the man who ran the mines.  The majestic looking INN on the corner, a small old bar that I will most definitely be back for, the main store through old tall doors, and a beautifully appealing bakery.  I bought a couple .50 cent cartons of SunnyD, and I was back on that road out of town, in my southerly direction, sipping on my first carton.  Just up ahead was the 88, otherwise known as Carson Pass, which takes you between Jackson and Tahoe roughly.  I took the split towards Pine Grove in the direction of the 88 towards Jackson, but when I got to the 88, I was like "you know, let's go see that road that takes me down into a place called West Point."  A sign along the 88 that I'd driven past so many times, and never gone.  I was curious.
        This was exciting.  I looked at my gas gauge, I was still practically full.  I'd have plenty of gas to last me no matter how long it would take me to get through these mountains, and at this point I had decided to shoot this back road all the way from the 88, into the backside of Murphy's.  Now what we locals know about these remote areas, is that they're full of the kinda back woods people that will shoot to kill, and live remotely for a reason.  Fortunately, that wasn't really on my mind today.  And I had enough knives within reach to carve a herd of Buffalo.  And when I'm feeling fearless, I'll go anywhere alone.  So onto West Point I went.  It was windy, and the road was steep in places, so I kept it in 3rd gear mostly, which seems a good gear for the speeds you maintain going around tight corners, long downhills, and suddenly steep uphills.  I came to a bridge that goes over a neat deep flowing river, that I imagine is packed in summer with sun bathers and partying locals.  And just as quickly as I was down in that ravine, I was climbing steeply up to the top of a ridge and into town.
      Now, West Point is a small, very interesting town, properties packed with old things strewn about, a small store, and a bar with no windows called "The Academy Club."  I turned around in front of a home with people in a drive way with lots of broken cars, trying not to make eye contact.  But I took it all in.  The frail asian woman walking out of the house toward her cat.  What looked like an old church that was now someones dwelling.  The guy at the top of town navigating the hoard of belongings on his property. Nothing had convinced me to move there.  I kept rolling.  Down the 26.  My turn off onto Railroad Flat was up ahead.  And that took me to an even smaller town that I'd never heard of called Wilseyville.   There was even less here it seemed.  Yet still there were inhabitants of these remote territories.  Just enough to keep the stores open, and the lights on.
       I rolled more quickly through Wilseyville, stopped in front of an old closed building, to read one of those "historic monument plaques" something dedicated to the mining settlers of the area, at the peak of it's operation, and how it dwindled to a few hundred inhabitants due to black fever.  I thought to myself "is that any relation to black plague?"  As I rolled away from the town, I admired an old wooden fence that marked off a beautiful carved meadow on the edge of a ridge of tall dense trees.  What a lovely property.  I dreamed of those acres being mine.  I was suddenly out of the edge of town, into the windy darkening woods.  The sunset was providing enough light in the sky that I didn't need my headlights yet.  And I could still admire the sparsely laid properties along the road.  I drove for a while.  Past some road workers that seemed to be taking a tally of the passing cars.  And though nothing seemed out of the ordinary, I suddenly got a feeling that I wasn't where I should have been. I started to doubt the direction of my travel, something told me to check the map.
         Then there I was, my blue dot hanging far off the route, and I could see that I was near what looked like a small lake.  "How the heck did I get off the main road?  That's impossible!"  I had that inkling, that I needed to turn around, and quickly.  You know that feeling.  A truck was behind me with its headlights on.   I turned down this one road, and turned around in front of a church camp driveway just off Schaad Rd.  I checked my route back to the main road, and this time I followed it closely for that turnoff.  There was some property being worked on looked like something big was going to happen there.  I was curious, but I was losing light and wanted to get back on Railroad Flat.  When I found my turn off, I was like, "Well, no wonder I missed it, it dashes down suddenly and to the right.  I'm sure lots of people miss that turn."  I read the sign of the road I was lost on, "Blue Mountain Rd."    (unbeknownst to me this will all soon become relevant)
        Railroad Flat took me to the town Railroad Flat, and along that long remote windy road, I passed lots of dreamily eery properties.  Questionably abandoned cars on deep lots.  Moldy boarded up sheds.  The whole lot.  I crept by them all.  Investigating their purpose, and decay.  I came upon properties where people were putting trailers on vacant lots, felled trees, lumbered logs, and lots of off grid living.  Soon I was onto Sheep Ranch Road.  The terrain was getting steeper and more canyonesque as the topography of hte landscape closes in on Murphy's.  The road was more of a one lane that you have to occasionally share with a speeding oncoming local.  And so we shared.  And I crept in and out of tight turns and canyons.  The road got really rough in places, and I could hear all my truck bolts trying to shake lose.  I was finally at Murphy's.  This is where the road gets familiar.
      Not wanting to go home...still....I decided to head up the hill to my buddy Johnny and Allie's house.  Once there, I told them about my holiday with my family, the conflicts, the not wanting to go home, the needed space, and then about my travels that day.   Johnny goes, "You went through Wilseyville?"  The usual "You shouldn't go driving around out there alone without a firearm..." all that same stuff we all know.  The usual warnings.   And then he brought up the story....of..."Charles Ng and Leonard Lake."   I was like "What????"  Allie was like "yeah, it's crazy creepy shit."  and I was like "how come I never heard of this shit?"  We were all drinking.  
       That night I'd discover that Wilseyville was the notorious location for the serial killings that happened at the hands of two evil men, the years surrounding 1985.  And so Allie started looking up the location of the supposed property where they did their killings.  Turns out that it all happened at a property on the corner of Blue Mountain and Schaad Rd.  That very place where I first had that notion that I was on the wrong road.  I was like "Holy Crap!  I was right there!  Something drew me down that road today.  I was meant to go there.  And I was meant for you guys to tell me about it today."  Needless to say it was a trip to find out about.  I also thought about how many of those murdered could have been lost unfortunate travelers who ended up in their back roads snare, easily mistaken for a main road, asking for directions.  And all the reason to never go anywhere without means of self defense.
        Johnny was a little freaked out about how me and Allie kept talking about it, enthralled.   But he had some good points, he said he believes in if you seek things, you'll find things.  Which is a good thing to remember.  But none of those people who were ensnared in their web of murder were looking for those things, they were just unaware of the evils that lurked behind neighborly eyes, and the sick psychological depths of serial murderer minds.  So to this, I say, always be prepared, and if you're prepared you should never be scared.  Because fear prevents you from going wherever your freedom wants you and tells you to go.  So I say, "go on all roads and travels, and be prepared, never scared."
       Some things are calling you.  Some things still need to be discovered.  Some roads are worth traveling no matter how shady and dangerous they seem.  The world is yours.  Travel your freedom.

See you on the Road, and Happy New Year.

J.W.