STREET WISE: / New Directions : A Daily Mini-Escape From the Freeways

I’ve often said that I really have two offices, one where I develop film and print my photographs for the newspaper, the other my car, which is stuffed with cameras, maps, two-way radios and police monitors.

For about 30,000 miles-a-year, my second office takes me across and up and down the county, from the coast to the mountains, through valleys and canyons. There are scenic roads in abundance to chose as a favorite.

There is California 76, winding from the Pacific through the San Luis River Valley, with its vistas of farms, horse ranches and switchback sections that challenge you to pay attention as you climb into the higher mountain foothills, and, like some grand design, ends in the valley by Lake Henshaw.

There is Gopher Canyon Road along with Del Dios Highway with its vistas of Lake Hodges, and Highland Valley Road.

In Escondido, there is Juniper Street, with its fine older homes surrounded by evergreens

And, in Poway, the northern part of Midland Road, where the city has established building restrictions and codes that will attempt to capture that road’s past and preserve it as part of that town’s heritage. It was once the center of Poway, and now even new construction projects will be required to have that early turn-of-the-century Western look. A park has been added along with historic buildings and a town museum.

But, although noteworthy, Midland seemed too short a road to qualify as my favorite, and Juniper, too sparse.

I thought of all the reasons North County is my home--the farm-style roads, the schools, the hills and mountains, the lack of big-city congestion.

I shifted into third gear, accelerating along the windy, eucalyptus lined two-lane road that I had traveled nearly every day driving from and returning to Poway.

The road that was temporarily shut down while it was being straightened, and “improved” a few years back. The road that nearly was lost to me when one community that it passes through attempted to keep it closed to through traffic from Poway. The road that had once served as the stage coach route between Escondido and San Diego.

I was driving upon that very favorite road of mine when it struck me that this route was my mini-daily escape from the many freeways that I toured daily, my mini-escape from the pressures encountered during the day, and a nice way to ease into the hustle-and-bustle of that next day. Pomerado Road is the road I’d labored to write about.