The serpentine strip of asphalt known as Sonoma Mountain Road wends its way through a bucolic landscape 50 miles north of San Francisco, curving past rows of grapevines, dipping into redwood groves, rising again through rippling hills.

It's a beautiful ride. But it is also a bumpy one.

"You get pothole patch after pothole patch," groused Craig Harrison, a local resident and attorney who is part of a grass-roots campaign to fix the crumbling roads of Sonoma County. "We're going to be a test case of what a county does with a completely failed road system."

By Jonathan Weber and Tim Reid
Reuters - 5/29/2013