Mantelli Drive Loop

This is a nice loop that starts out semi-rural going from Morgan Hill towards Gilroy, then climbs up over the foothills separating Gilroy from the next valley over, which is rural, with ranches and vineyards. I’m not sure of the name of that valley, but Watsonville Road runs through it on the way to Hecker pass highway, which goes over the Santa Cruz mountains. One way to cross the foothills is the very steep Mantelli Drive, which offers this view from the top, with the Santa Cruz mountains in the distance. As you can see, I got a nice day for it.

After winding my way over to Watsonville road on Burchell drive, I came out right a Chictactic-Adams Heritage County Park, which has a lot of interesting petroglyphs and other artifacts from Native Americans that lived in this area. I’ll cover that in detail in a future post.

This all took a couple of hours of pleasurable cruising.