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Big River-Jack Peters Creek projects tie up traffic in Mendo for up to 45 minutes.. will it continue?

Photo of Frank Hartzell Frank Hartzell Send an email 1 week ago
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Big River-Jack Peters Creek projects tie up traffic in Mendo for up to 45 minutes.. will it continue?
The Liquidator, which uses water blasting to remove paint and striping materials from the road looks monstorous in the sunset.

Linda and I and Brutus went to Mendo on Wednesday afternoon for Sweetwater soaking and dog walking on Big River Beach. We were astonished at the traffic tieups, especially the one caused by the restriping of Big River Bridge, as this one is NOT on the Caltrans road site!. And it was causing the very long delays. . Delays of 30-45 minutes were common, according to our experience and what others told us.The Jack Peters Creek bridge deck and railing project has been underway for a year and appears not to be connected to the Big River work and causes delays more like 5 to 10 minutes. There were long waits as the pilot car went back and forth. Enough to really mess you up if you needed to be somewhere. The issue stopped just before Little Lake Road, then on the other side of Little Lake was the Jack Peters Creek tieup.

The Liquidator looks only slightly less terrifying from this angle. It makes quite a bit of noise
Jack Peters Creek Bridge snarls arent visibile from this angle, but the construction continues through fall.
Lots of guys were walking in the middle of the road and shouting about something. Not sure what they were doing but the road was blocked for more than the Liquidator

Although they were simply end-to-end, not the same project, going through Mendo was a big time commitment to travelers on State Route 1 on Wednesday. There were several folks on the MCN listserv complaining about the very long delays. Will it continue tomorrow? The work was going hot and heavy at 9 pm when we left in the dark. But since its not on the list of Caltrans projects in its daily bulletin or map of all projects on State Route 1, I will have to ask the District 1 spokesman, Manny Machado, and see if it would make sense for travelers to the Anderson Valley to take Highway 20 to 253 tomorrow. The problem with that is the list above does show work on 253! Stay tuned.

We went down to Big Riverand the sounds of the construction equipment were pretty loud. I took pictures of this pretty woman on the beach. I hope she doesn’t think I am voyeur.—–
Brutus was glad we got stuck at Big River Beach where he could play “dig to China”
Digging in the water is even more fun
Any day is a good day for swimming in Big River.
I met Emily McMartin the cemetery after getting bored waiting for the pilot car and walking to Sweetwater from Big River. She died just after the Civil War and was reinterred from Mendocino’s cemetery north of town to this one in 1886, to be near a woman she knew. She is never called Emily only Mrs. Duncan McMartin in the 1886 Mendocino Beacon and on the grave. The McMartins were from Canada and moved from Mendocino to Southern California, where some of them later became famous in the golden era of Hollywood.
Ill never admire jerks like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos but these guys I admire and thank for actually do something worthwhile for the country, instead of destroying it.
We stopped Wednesday to take another photo of Gracie who was calling loudly for George in her nest. No sign of Mr. Osprey today.
Photo of Frank Hartzell Frank Hartzell Send an email 1 week ago
0 579 2 minutes read
Photo of Frank Hartzell

Frank Hartzell

Frank Hartzell is a freelancer reporter and an occasional correspondent for The Mendocino Voice. He has published more than 10,000 news articles since his first job in Houston in 1986. He is the recipient of numerous awards for many years as a reporter, editor and publisher mostly and has worked at newspapers including the Appeal-Democrat, Sacramento Bee, Newark Ohio Advocate and as managing editor of the Napa Valley Register.

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