There are two significant climbs on the ride. The first one of these is a short one that is near the beginning of the ride as Vasco Road crosses over the hills separating Livermore Valley from the Central Valley. If you don't count a small hill arriving just as you're leaving the outlying Livermore neighborhoods for open countryside, the first time the slope exceeds 5% grade on this ride is just before the 2.5-mile mark. At the steepest point of this climb, the slope is around 8% grade but that's only for a moment. The rest of the uphill stretches almost never exceed 7% grade during this first spell of elevation gain and usually hover at or below 5%. Moreover, while this uphill stretch lasts for about four miles, the climb here is broken up by two sizable descents on your way up. In the bigger picture, this climb is little more than a good warm-up.
This climb is also where you begin to encounter some of the sights that make the scenery of Vasco Road interesting. These otherwordly, hilltop rows of minimalist windmills spread across a terrain of rounded, grassy, empty hills is what made the original Vasco Road appear so striking to me; try to picture the sight of them on either side of a narrower and more curvy road going through a narrower valley. This scenery flanks the route as you crest this first climb and also for much of the descent on the other side. As you get closer to the flat terrain of the Central Valley near the end of that descent, most of the windmills dwindle along with the rolling hills themselves.
For a brief period, however, Vasco Road becomes a flat and fast thoroughfare at the edge of Central Valley farmlands, when it meets Camino Diablo Road.