March 19, Mt Hopkins

(jump to day 1: March 14, from Soledad)

 A highlight of our rides from Tubac was a climb up Mt Hopkins, 20 miles that gain 5,600' to the summit at 8,600'. The mountain is home to the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory.

We could see the top from our rental house in Tubac, the little white spot on the peak in the middle of this photo:

The ride starts on friendly pavement off route 19 between Green Valley and Tubac.

It turns to dirt shortly past the visitor's center at eight miles or so, and gets steeper than it looks.

The dirt wasn't as long as we expected, just four or five miles, then back to pavement, with a proper kick up at the end, some 20+% up around to the tippy top.

From there we could appreciate what we'd climbed, through the staff village just below the summit,

and the switchbacks farther down.

The views all around to the north, west and south are spectacular; to the east there's an even higher peak but you have to hike it apparently. Looking west you can see the bottom of the road coming up from the visitor's center and the green belt of Tubac.

A cool thing about this building at the top is the signs alerting people that it might rotate.

If you need one more thing to check out before you go get your work done, click here for the Relive animation of our route through a topo-map setting, silly but fun.


March 14, out of Soledad
March 15, Palmdale
March 16, Goat Canyon Trestle

March 16, Goat Canyon Trestle

After a nice visit and overnight in La Jolla we headed east on the 8 across the bottom of California. For some reason we were surprised to find ourselves so close to Mexico that we got a look at the border fence, the brown line here, steel posts, not all that tall. Even while it's just a fence it’s hard to absorb such a hard, seemingly arbitrary line laid on a landscape that is just the same in so many ways on both sides of it.

Looking for possible ride routes to drop into our day's drive I'd studied Google maps to scope out the area around a road variously labeled S2 or the Imperial Highway or the Great Southern Overland Stage Route or Sweeney Pass Road--those are promising names, eh? But I noticed a marker for Goat Canyon Trestle near Ocotillo and had to click on it, of course. That got me access to pictures like this:

And there's a Wikipedia page that says "Goat Canyon Trestle is the world's largest curved wooden trestle" along with lots of interesting stuff about the railroad and its history. How could we not try to check this out? We followed some advice I found online to park at DeAnza Springs Resort and discovered that this is a tidy little RV park, not crowded, with office staff well used to orienting visitors toward the trestle. It also became apparent from signs along the lanes to the office that it's a clothing-optional compound. Since it was in the low 40s clothes actually didn't feel all that optional.

Goat Canyon Trestle is some seven miles out along trail that sticks close to the tracks, crosses many smaller trestles, and goes though a bunch of dark, narrow tunnels. At least that's true for the first 4-plus miles.

It turned out to be slow going, though very entertaining, so we did not make it all the way to the big trestle in the time we had, but we got a happy taste of it and it we will definitely be going back to make the full round trip--with headlamps!

next: March 19, Mt Hopkins

March 15, Palmdale

We spent our second night on the road in Palmdale, planning to skirt LA the next day to get to La Jolla. The morning's ride was windy and cold and freezing and windy. We came to understand why the biggish flag pole near our motel was pretty short and very stocky.

We started by exploring some dirt roads on the southwest of the sprawl that looked promising on the map, but they seemed to mostly dead-end at locked ranch gates. We tooled around there for a while before we were finally put off by the mountains of trash, piles of furniture and garbage bags, demo-ed construction debris, baby stuff, clothing, plastic toys... I'm amazed this photo doesn't include any of that litter while it does capture some mixed feelings.

 

We finally took to the empty four-lane boulevard, then more dirt, some abandoned pavement, then trail, and a crossing through a paved drainage ditch (or a creek?) to get to another dirt area a local bike shop had recommended. The best reward for taking their advice was coming upon this part of the California aqueduct, fantastically flat and floating way above the urban landscape. 

I'm afraid I'd have to agree with a friend that "dystopian" is the way to describe Palmdale. But until we are better clued into the hidden gems here we can at least recommend these two positives: The Squeaky Wheel is a solid, friendly bike shop, and we did find some great Thai food. 

next: March 16, Goat Canyon Trestle

March 14, from Soledad

A couple weeks ago Harlan and I made a meal of driving to Tubac, Arizona, south of Tucson, near where his folks winter from Ohio. We took a bit more than three days so we could explore some roads along the way and visit friends in La Jolla. 

First morning on the road, we did sweet ride out of Soledad into the Carmel Valley. We rode this last in 1978, separately at the time, part of our first century rides for both of us. There are a lot more vineyards along the way now, but not much else has changed.

Before heading south after the ride we checked out what's left of Mission Soledad, founded 1791: not a lot. The roof in the background below is an attempt to slow the rest of the remaining walls from melting away. But you could easily make me believe these grape vines are 200+ years old, they are that impressively venerable.

next: March 15, Palmdale