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bikes, GPS, history, MTB, roadtrip, travel, USA

Montana de Oro & Hearst Castle

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A small State park half an hour’s drive south-west of San Luis Obispo, Montana de Oro’s trails came highly recommended from Chip. Arriving at the trailhead around ten o’clock, the view of the ocean was still shrouded in that strange coastal summer fog. Still, it was sunny above & I was off following another Garmin Connect trail up a fireroad. Just as I got to the start of the East Boundary, I met another rider coming down the hill & he told that the trails had changed a bit & advised me of the best route for a two to three hour ride. I continued up East Boundary with a few switchbacks, ignoring the trails I would have taken had it not been for the good advice. The climbing was pretty easy & I started to get some good views down the valleys. Pausing briefly to let a couple of horses past I was soon going down the other side to a fireroad. This was great fun as it was a smooth trail, but with some quite substantial water bars to jump off. All too soon as I was heading for the coast, with a nice cove, on the fire road.

The local club kindly provided tools in case I wanted to do a little trail maintenance

It wasn’t long until I got off the main road & headed up the Hazzard Peak trail. At the start of this trail, the local bike club had installed a box of small cow bells – for riders to borrow to warn other trail users of fast approaching riders.

I grabbed one for the hell of it, thinking I may as well give it a go. The bell didn’t last long on the gentle climb before being stuffed in my pack. In fact, after a few minutes of downhill I was driven so maniacal by the bell, I was likely to push anyone I met off the side of trail. I continued up the climb (about 300 metres, but not as steep as Monday’s 300m climb), crossed a few of the closed old trails before reaching Hazzard Peak.

The ride off the top was fantastic, some of the most fun, flowing downhill I’ve done in quite a while. There were ample little bumps to catch some air off, some loose rocks to make it interesting & plenty of banked corners to throw the bike into. About three times there would be a tight right-hander all of a sudden & you really had to make those as the outside edge was really sandy & off-camber. The last little part of the trail was called Manzanita & was also excellent, much bigger water bars to jump over with confidence. Back at the car in less than two hours, I was pleased I went around the direction I did.

Back at the motel in SLO we hurriedly booked the last two tickets for the 3.30 tour of Hearst Castle, had lunch & set off up Highway 1 for about an hour to check out William Randolph Hearst’s sprawling complex. Seriously rich from newspapers at the beginning of the twentieth century, he & architect Julia Morgan designed & built a huge place to house his extensive European & Egyptian art collection (he bought something like twenty percent of the big European art firesale after the First World War). The castle & its three guest houses are up a five mile driveway overlooking the Pacific on a site where Hearst used to camp with his parents when he was a kid (his father having built up an extensive holding of ranching land previously).

My first impressions were that it was just a big place of someone who had too much money just throwing all sorts of very old European artifacts together & it was all a little weird. But the place grew on me & as I saw more & more of the collection & heard where various pieces were from & how staggeringly old they were. For instance, in the main living/sitting room in the house were four gigantic Flemish tapestries – these four are part of an original set of ten, only five of which remain – these must be important as the Louvre has had replicas made of all ten. It was some serious art. The last thing we saw was another pool (the outdoor one was built three times before Hearst was happy with it & had pillars next to it about two-thousand years old) built under two tennis courts. The indoor pool was for the most part three metres deep & laid with thousands of beautiful tiles, quite a few of which were coated in 22 carat gold leaf. The guest list was quite something too – Bob Hope, Churchill, Chaplin, Cary Grant, Clark Gable & Carole Lombard, Hedda Hopper, WC Fields & all sorts of others I’ve never heard off. Quite an interesting place all up – unfortunately we didn’t see any of the zebra grazing the land as we drove out. Descendants of originals that used to be in the private zoo (which also included giraffes, polar bears, kangaroos, antelope, impala & others) they have managed to stick around.

bikes, city, GPS, MTB, roadtrip, travel, USA

Moseying around San Diego

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With a long ride & a longer night to recover from, yesterday was pretty casual.  The sun managed to even come out a bit from behind the marine layer of cloud as we wandered around the Seagrove Village area of Embarcadero (downtown on the harbourside).  I left Valerie to look around the aircraft carrier USS Midway (I checked it out last time) & then took off around the bay to Point Loma & had a look around Cabrillo National Monument. The monument commemorates the first landing of a European on the west coast of the USA – by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo of Portugal in 1542. There were good views of the North Beach Naval Air Station & its jets taking off, the city & harbour and out over the Pacific. Being on a headland to an important harbour, there was of course an old lighthouse to look around.

Not able to bring myself to have two consecutive days off the bike, I had found a nice close & short ride to attack before lunch. Heading south to Chula Vista & then east to the San Miguels I was riding at nine o’clock under a cloudy sky. Shortly after setting off, I was heading up Mt Miguel & quite rapidly. There were a lot of switchbacks, & not all were as friendly as those up San Juan on Thursday. With the rocks on some of them, they were right at the limit of my middle-ring strength but I managed to keep pushing it around. After almost 300m climbing in half an hour I was at the summit under clear skies & feeling a little warm. With the biggest cairn I’d seen in a long time, I could work out why the trail was named Rockhouse – there was what looked like the simplest rock-outlined maze next to it. I suppose if you used your imagination you could see the waist high walls as a basic house floorplan.

The ride off the peak was steeper than that up, so I was pleased to not have gone up that. The last section had a bit of service road before flattening out to loop around a smaller hill. Here I saw my first roadrunner. At least, it looked like what I thought one ought to look like. Alas, I didn’t see a coyote go flying passed with rocket-propelled shoes so I couldn’t be sure. It strutted around a bit & had a interesting call (not quite meep-meep). The trail around the hill was nice & I was enjoying the scenery. More service road (at least there were some big water bars to jump off) & singletrack mix gradually wound itself back to the car.

By the time I got back into the city, the clouds had also disappeared from there too – so we spent the afternoon wandering around city parks. Balboa Park was great in the sunshine. I stupidly left my camera behind, but as I’d been there before wasn’t too concerned. The Spanish architecture built for the 1915 Panama-Californain Exposition is just fantastic. After getting a bit of simple work done on the car, we checked out the Mt Soledad Memorial with its great panoramas of the city & then headed down to La Jolla Cove to wander around the seaside & look at the seals, sea lions & pelicans.

bikes, food, friends, GPS, MTB, roadtrip, travel, USA

Bike cleaning, great food & a big ride

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Coronado was well worth a look, as the bridge over is not far from where we are staying in San Diego. We moseyed around late Friday morning, found some great ginger beer in a Scottish shop (not quite sure what that was doing there, but the accent was great) & generally looked over the harbour at the city while chatting with a very talkative gallery owner.

The afternoon had been long ago handed over to bike maintenance at Chip’s place. My bike was still filthy from its Utah & Colorado muddy adventures & just altogether greasy. So it was great to hang out with Chip (I met & rode with him a bit last time I was here, we’ve obviously kept in touch) & pull various parts of my bike to bits. A short trip to the LBS (local bike shop) later I had been converted to a Geax Saguaro on the rear (back to tubeless, the tire was so hard to get on the rim I don’t see it coming off any time soon).  After riding on it for a day, I’m not entirely won over – it didn’t seem to give as much climbing traction as the Crossmark.

All the time I was tinkering with my bike Chip & Dale (a coincidence I assure you) had been preparing a feast for us. Over the last two years I’d got the impression that the food served around here is fantastic, so I was pleased to see this great looking barbecue in action.

The homemade bread was delicious, the barbecued chicken & ribs absolutely fantastic and the homemade strudel so good Valerie managed to down a whole one. With some good wine & a lot of travel & bike stories it was definitely the most memorable meal of the trip so far. Thanks so much for having us in your home,, Chip & Dale – I can’t say much more, I don’t want it going to your heads.

It wasn’t a late night, however, as Chip had organised a big ride for early Saturday morning. With most of an hour’s driving out of the way, nineteen of us were on our bikes by 7.45. We were riding a big loop around the Cuyamacas – I’d done this same loop (or a similar one) with a few of the same people last time, but in reverse. I’m not quite sure how we ended up with so many people, but it was fun – even if it did end up breaking up into two or three smaller groups at times.

It was a nice morning for a ride, not too hot, clear & usually there was enough breeze to keep the annoying bugs away. We ended up doing 50km/31 miles & there was a fair bit of climbing involved (1200m). I mostly sat in the back group just hanging out & cruising along in the middle ring pretending I was slower than I am – was good fun. Although a long ride, it wasn’t too technical (some short sections up required a little pushing) so I wasn’t as tired by the end of it as I expected – hungry though. I think because I’d ridden it before I didn’t end taking a lot of photos, but here are a few.

Despite having been told by many that riding the loop anti-clockwise was better, I’m not so sure. The climbing was definitely easier, but the way we went yesterday had a big downhill on a fireroad – reading my post of last time I rode here, I was definitely more excited about the down sections going clockwise. Still, it was wonderful ride – the longest of the trip so far, so that’s got to be good for the legs.

I wasn’t long home & showered & I got a text from Andrea, so I spent the evening in PB (Pacific Beach) with her & some of her friends – very nice to catch up & see a familiar Kiwi face. It was great just to be driving back into the area; the scenery is always good in PB. It turned into a bigger night than I’ve had for quite sometime (which is not altogether difficult), so I’m not sure if I’m tired from the ride or not getting to bed (couch) until late. Best thing was the lack of mugging. But the sun is out now, so we should go & explore San Diego a little more.

bikes, GPS, MTB, roadtrip, travel, USA

San Juan ride

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With dodgy WiFi at the motel last night, this was the only page I had to go on for a ride today (fortuitiously left open on my browser from the previous morning). I’d heard it was a good one, but quite a long ride. I managed to get a jpeg of the topo map on my GPS & work out how to find the trailhead, so this morning with an hour’s drive through the June Gloom I was setting off for a ride up a big hill. Luckily for me, another guy pulled up shortly after & he’d ridden the trail before – so I joined Levi, a lifeguard at a beach just a little south.

Speaking of the beach, this was the closest I’d been to the ocean for quite sometime. 250m was also the lowest elevation I’ve been at for over a year (the London weekend doesn’t count), so I was hoping my mountain lungs would hold me in good stead. Straight off the bat, the trail just climbs & climbs – first through fifteen (count them) switchbacks before starting to follow the contour of the hills a bit more. The climbing continued for the first 10.5 km, surrounded by artillery barrages echoing through the hills from the nearby Marines’ base Camp Pendleton. Apart from some tricky switchbacks it was all pretty easy & I cruised up with quite a few breaks to wait for Levi. The trail surface was really nice crushed granite, in some places the scrub tended to encroach a little; compared to what I’ve been riding recently, it wasn’t the slightest bit technical (that is, if you avoided the drainage ruts). The gloom wasn’t really conducive to photos, but I tried my best. Although it was quite cool in the cloud, I sure noticed the difference in being close to the sea – I haven’t sweated so much in who knows how long.

Switchbacks climbing out of the valley

More switchbacks, with the scenic Ortega Highway in the background

A wide easy section

About ninety minutes after leaving the car, we reached a fork in the trail at Cocktail Rock (so called because it looks a little like a bar). We went left up the wide trail here, eventually completing the loop on the trail that comes up the hill from behind the rock.

Cocktail Rock with the return of the loop on the right.

We’d done most of the big climbing by now, the loop was mostly undulating. It was quickly into a neat downhill section that was wide & fast, then filled with loose rocks & then rooty & rutted out. It was all great fun, with nothing too difficult there. Near the end of this part we’d left the scrub behind & were riding through meadows surrounding by massive trees – it was a surprise to see these & have some shade (the sun having begun to burn off the clouds just after eleven o’clock).

As we left the meadows behind & I saw this climb ahead, I was pleased to have Levi catch up & tell me to turn right & avoid it.

There were two more intersections (one with an old sign & one un-signed) where we had to take the right option. We got a bit more up & down in before returning to Cocktail Rock.

From here it was pretty much all downhill & boy was it fun. Nice smooth trail that just went down & down for more than half an hour. It was well worth the pedal up & negotiating all those switchbacks going down was a whole different skill to pedalling up around them. We were back at the trailhead with grins plastered on our faces. I was pleased that I’d taken a punt on the weather (we had a little rain on the drive there) & gone on this ride with another big ride promised in two days’ time. I wasn’t really hurting or exhausted by the end of 28km of riding & 1000m of climbing in 2:40 riding time – all those rests must have helped.

All the rocks dotted through the scrub looked a little odd – I kept thinking I was seeing water tanks on the ridge

Just to prove the sun came out & it was a nice day

After feeding the machine that powered me up the hill we hit the road to San Diego. Just over an hour down the I-5, it was great to be driving back into San Diego & recognising various placenames & exits from the freeway. My month here immediately after leaving NZ two years ago was just fantastic (apart from the mugging incident, of course). Disappointingly, my visit this time has been ill-timed to coincide with most of my Kiwi-American friends being out of town – I was so looking forward to staying in a home again & seeing people I know for a week or two. At least I still have a good riding buddy I met on my last visit – tomorrow is bike-TLC day (must be about my bike’s fourth birthday) & BBQ at his house, can’t wait.