Cruising and driving around for the best scenic route is my favorite thrilling thing to get the best pictures and exploring more about California.
"New Priest Grade Road" has the most hairpin and curvy road left and right, located on highway 120 Mocasin, Tuolumne County as an alternative to escape from using the snaky and most dangerous "Old Priest Grade" road.
The O'Briens Ferry Road will welcome all drivers with impressive and breathtaking sight of Lake Tulloch, then continue with the adventure of nearly 2 miles distance to the top of the terrain.
Indeed, an awesome vista of 1600 feet of steepness. To some motorists, may just drive or ride for fun for their adventure, to some, they need to take as their route to Yosemite, Groveland or to Big oak Flat.
One of the houses in lake Tulloch has slide right to the lake. What fun.
The beautiful features of scenic view is not only on new priest grade road. If you commuting to Yosemite the scenic of Big Oak Flat Road will keep you busy, especially by the rolling terrain. But if you are driving, I don't think you will have enough nerve to even look away from the road. It's more scarier than the new priest grade road.
Picture of Big Oak Flat Road was taken when we were driving to Yosemite few months ago.
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New Priest Grade Road VS Old Priest Grade
The differences are 20 minutes of drive and 7 minutes of drive, the old priest grade is shorter but the most dangerous one (google review). I have never driven there, as the GPS always take us to the new one.
The new priest grade built by some volunteers in 1915 , while the old priest grade built in 1859. In early 1850 old priest road or Gulch Wagon Road used by miners to travel around the gold camps, especially from Chinese Camp (gold rush mining) to Big Oak Flat.
The new priest straight off and an old priest grade road to the right, across from each other. Google map's photo.
By the way, stay tune for my next post of Chinese Camp, gold rush mining, a creepy ghost town in Jamestown just right by highway 120.
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