State Parks in high gear on old haul road removal
This reporter took the last joyride ever down the north end of the old Haul Road last week. A breathtaking trip it was. Construction crews had freshly unearthed nearly three miles of continuous road, making possible a spectacular oceanfront drive south from Ten Mile Bridge.
The day of my ride, crews were in the process of scraping the hard road surface away and hauling it to the retired quarry at Big River, east of Mendocino.
The excavated old road was still wide enough for two big gravel trucks to pass on and to move pretty fast along. The road had no holes and could still be driven at virtually any speed. And it was every bit the world class vista that I remember from the mid-1980s, when I rode from Ward Avenue to Ten Mile Bridge on a bicycle, with only two short breaks in the road then.