Run through the jungle…
… “Don’t look back.” – Credence Clearwater Revival
Maybe the “woodland” camouflage pattern really works!
A motorist on Calaveras Road “east” (south, I think) of Sunol, about two weeks ago, reported a teenager in camouflage clothing running up a creek bed from the road!
(I was not aware that such activity was illegal in California, but with the rate at which the California Legislature passes stupid laws, it MIGHT BE by now!) 
The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office investigated, and on Thursday (June 11, 2009), a marijuana eradication team found 24 linked pot gardens, three campsites, and three outdoor “kitchens” for food preparation off Calaveras Road, in the Calaveras Reservoir watershed, on land owned by the San Francisco Water District! More importantly, the team found 22,838 marijuana seedlings about 20 inches tall that were watered by two streams on a ridge!
The record find was the biggest outdoor marijuana-growing operation that the sheriff’s office has ever encountered!
Two men in their late 20’s, wearing woodland camouflage, ran away through the heavy brush and steep ravines, and escaped! One of the men dropped a loaded semi-automatic handgun in the process.
During the eradication process on Thursday and Friday, the team found tents, sleeping bags, bags of fertilizer, and pesticides. (Hmmmm, not “organically grown…!”)
Those with information about the marijuana farm are asked to call Sergeant Shawn Peterson with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office at (510) 667-3633.
I was sorry to hear about the handgun, not because I fear firearms (unlike the majority of the California Legislature), but because I occasionally ride my motorcycle along Calaveras Road. It is a really beautiful, rural, and scenic ride that could easily be disrupted by gunfire. There are a couple of 15-20-miles/hour hairpin turns (I touched my footpeg on one of these, at about 20 miles/hour). One of the hairpin turns is by a creek bed (hmmmmm…..). I know that during the height of the “dot-com boom,” a friend of mine confessed to COMMUTING along Calaveras Road to avoid I-680 traffic on the Sunol Grade, which I thought was just insane.
Once again (1, 2), please be careful on California’s rural lands!
(The photo above is of the Sunol Water Temple, along an apparently QUIETER portion of Calaveras Road in the San Francisco Water District. Correction added June 18, 2009: I guess that Calaveras Road is officially called “Paloma Road” in front to the Water Temple, according to Google Maps. The entrance to the Water Temple is at the intersection of Niles Canyon Road, Paloma Road, and Pleasanton-Sunol Road. I also questioned the description of the pot farm as being “east” of Sunol in the news article., rather than “south.”)
-Bill at Cheshire Cat Photo™
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