I rode the best route so far today. I went straight out to Orland on Highway 32 and kept going when it became County Road 200.
If you haven't taken a ride around Black Butte Lake and you live in the area, go do it.
Seriously, just get on a bike and ride out to Black Butte Lake.
It's beautiful. The road is great too, plenty of straight stretches to go fast and plenty of curves to give you a challenge.
The lake itself is nice, there are also a few places to pull over and have lunch, I stopped at the dam overlook, which also has bathrooms. It is marked as "B" on the Black Butte to Willows route on the map.
A view from the dam overlook.
Getting back on County Road 200, I didn't actually see the lake again, but riding through rolling hills and seeing old barns and cattle in the fields between the buttes, it reminded me that California is such a gorgeous place to live.
There were a couple places where the road was really torn up. One curve had about half the westbound lane completely eroded but potholes were all easily avoidable.
I thought about turning around and going back the way I had come, but decided to drive south on County Road 306, then hit Highway 162 to get back to Chico through Willows.
Taking a quick break.
I stopped at a small cemetery and looked at the gravestones. There were a bunch of Powells which is my dad's family's name (Reidel is my mother's maiden name, long story and not important to this story).
A couple of Powells buried in the Grindstone Cemetery.
With a roughly 20 minutes stop for lunch, this ride took me about 3 hours.
This route will surely be a regular part of my life, I can't wait to go do it again.
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