A couple of weeks ago I decided to take the long way home on a Friday and go for a drive through the wilderness.

Many people do not realize that the sprawling Bay Area of California has many wilderness areas.

It only takes a few minutes to go from sprawl to wilderness where you are driving along narrow curvy roads.

I drove through Livermore to Mines Road and headed south into the Livermore Hills. The road here is near the top of a canyon and you have great vistas of the canyon and the surrounding forest.

Here the road has not narrowed too much, but you still have to be careful of cars coming from the other direction. Luckily, there was very little traffic. In my drive through the wilderness area I saw less then 20 vehicles.

I took Mines road down to Del Puerto Canyon Road, which is about 30 miles south of Livermore.

Del Puerto Canyon Road goes through the hills to Patterson which is in the Central Valley about 20 miles away.

On Del Puerto Canyon Road you see many cattle guards. This means that you are entering a free range area and that you have to be careful and watch out for cattle while you are driving.

The sun was dropping low in the west, so there were many areas where the road would be in shadow. I had to be real careful going through the curves as I would go from shade to sunlight and have limited visibility.

This picture is a perfect example of the curves along the route. There were very few areas where you would go straight for more than a few hundred meters.

I really like this picture as the foreground is all in the shade and the hills ahead are highlighted by the setting sun. I really like the golden color of the hills.

As I got closer to the Central Valley and into the Patterson Hills, the landscape changed. The hills had a lot less trees on them and they had a nice golden color.

You also started to see more signs of civilization like these ranch buildings and corrals.

The drive from Livermore down to Patterson took almost 2 hours and for most of journey I didn’t have any cell coverage.

Luckily I knew where I was going and didn’t need to access a map. I didn’t have a print map with me :-).

I remember when I always had a map with me in the car. Something we don’t think about today when we live in an urban area.

Do you enjoy driving through remote areas?

Steven