Left Coast Geek
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Was coming home from a Thanksgiving visit to my brother's, after spending the night. He lives in Marin County, I live in Santa Cruz, we (wife+me)decided to take the coast route home in spite of post thanksgiving 'sunday traffic'.... Stopped in Half Moon Bay for lunch at a diner we'd never tried before (it was awful), while eating, I noted a fire truck followed by an ambulance blasting southbound on 1, and 10 or 15 mins later, another fire truck. whoa.
left the diner, headed south, and when we were just about in the middle of nowhere, we came upon stopped cars. initially it was stop and crawl, I figured we'd get through but during one of the longer stops, I looked up highway 1 on the CHP's incident report website, and whoa, there was a fatality just ahead, something about a GMC Yukon 'fully involved'. after nearly an hours delay, word came back that they were saying '3-4 hours', so I decided to join everyone else in turning around. Highway One north was bad with all the people who'd jsut turned around, but I knew just a few miles up was Tunitas Creek Rd, a narrow gnarly road that twists up a coastal canyon lined with redwood trees and ends up at Skyline Drive aka highway 35 on the top of the Peninsula...
I continue to be amazed at how well this big SUV composes itself on narrow twisty roads with all kinda difficult driving.
From the top of Tunitas, we took 35 south to 9 south through Boulder Creek, and Felton, then back to our Santa Cruz abode, 9 is considered a premiere motorcycle road, and I certainy rode my old beemer bike up and down it a bunch going to or from various places.
I think our Expedition Limited Stealth with the CCDS, sitting on 18" F150 wheels rides better under gnarly conditions than most any car we've had short of my wife's old 1994 Mercedes with its hydraulic load leveling. The Ford had that same 'no drama' feel the Mercedes, even when I had to abruptly slow way down real fast for an oncoming car and put two wheels on the dirt so they could squeeze by on that one lane road. And on the faster 2 lane 35 and 9 highways, which are both continuous turns, it rode level without any body lean or bounce/bobble.
The hour home on 1 stretched into a 3 hour tour that took us through some scenic places we'd not visited in some years. Was very glad I made a point of learning every road on the coast side of the Peninsula many years ago, because the mainstream alternative was going all the way back to Half Moon Bay, then joining the crawl of cars over 92 to I280, then freeway back to the 4-lane highway 17 over the mountains, likely would have been heavy traffic the whole way, UGH!
I've had a few trucks before. not counting the 1965 F100 6 cyl 3-speed that we used as a dump run junker... we had a 2001 E150 passenger van, a 2008 toyota tacoma trd offroad 4x4, a 2002 F250 diesel longbed 4x4, and they all drove like trucks in the mountains, wallowing around turns.
left the diner, headed south, and when we were just about in the middle of nowhere, we came upon stopped cars. initially it was stop and crawl, I figured we'd get through but during one of the longer stops, I looked up highway 1 on the CHP's incident report website, and whoa, there was a fatality just ahead, something about a GMC Yukon 'fully involved'. after nearly an hours delay, word came back that they were saying '3-4 hours', so I decided to join everyone else in turning around. Highway One north was bad with all the people who'd jsut turned around, but I knew just a few miles up was Tunitas Creek Rd, a narrow gnarly road that twists up a coastal canyon lined with redwood trees and ends up at Skyline Drive aka highway 35 on the top of the Peninsula...
I continue to be amazed at how well this big SUV composes itself on narrow twisty roads with all kinda difficult driving.
From the top of Tunitas, we took 35 south to 9 south through Boulder Creek, and Felton, then back to our Santa Cruz abode, 9 is considered a premiere motorcycle road, and I certainy rode my old beemer bike up and down it a bunch going to or from various places.
I think our Expedition Limited Stealth with the CCDS, sitting on 18" F150 wheels rides better under gnarly conditions than most any car we've had short of my wife's old 1994 Mercedes with its hydraulic load leveling. The Ford had that same 'no drama' feel the Mercedes, even when I had to abruptly slow way down real fast for an oncoming car and put two wheels on the dirt so they could squeeze by on that one lane road. And on the faster 2 lane 35 and 9 highways, which are both continuous turns, it rode level without any body lean or bounce/bobble.
The hour home on 1 stretched into a 3 hour tour that took us through some scenic places we'd not visited in some years. Was very glad I made a point of learning every road on the coast side of the Peninsula many years ago, because the mainstream alternative was going all the way back to Half Moon Bay, then joining the crawl of cars over 92 to I280, then freeway back to the 4-lane highway 17 over the mountains, likely would have been heavy traffic the whole way, UGH!
I've had a few trucks before. not counting the 1965 F100 6 cyl 3-speed that we used as a dump run junker... we had a 2001 E150 passenger van, a 2008 toyota tacoma trd offroad 4x4, a 2002 F250 diesel longbed 4x4, and they all drove like trucks in the mountains, wallowing around turns.
