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