We woke up to a beautiful morning on the lake with lots of birds making a heck of a racket. The first thing I did was to finish writing yesterday’s blog entry. I still don’t have internet access so I wrote it offline, like I’m doing this one, and will put the text and photos together when I get a better connection. That might not be until the trip is over, based on what I’ve experienced so far.
We loaded up and headed north, back through Julian, where we’d got gas and beer last night. Julian is a sort of tourist Mecca and the focus is on cider since they grow lots of apples there. We went through town and headed out on Hwy 79, enjoying the scenery and the curvy roads. We went past LOTS of fruit orchards, mostly oranges but some avocados.
Back when I lived in Southern California in the ‘70s and ‘80s, I rode my Honda CB750 through these hills quite a bit. It was an easy reach from Long Beach to head down the 405 freeway and get into these back roads. The first time I'd ridden Hwy 79 was in August of 1979. I'd just returned from a cross country motorcycle trip and the next day or so I hear a Harley come up the driveway of the duplex I shared. The biker was looking for my neighbors whom he had met in Canada and they told him to stop by sometime so here he was. We all got along great and he said he'd like to ride in the desert, I ride I wrote about here where I also mention that we got speeding tickets on this highway. Ah, memories from youth...
We motored on and when I saw the turnoff for the Palomar observatory, I took it. This was a popular destination for my motorcyclist friends and I back in the day. Like I said, we could get here with a quick hop down the freeway and ride all these cool roads and end up at the observatory, a beautiful feature that was built in the late 1930s. Riding them again brought back lots of pleasant memories.
The road to the top is very curvy and about halfway up they had it closed to a single lane as they were resurfacing one half. We had to wait a bit for the pilot car to lead us through that zone.
Here's some video of the ride up.
When we got to the observatory parking lot, we were the only ones there. We parked the bikes in the shade and walked up the path toward the museum which turned out to be closed. If I remember correctly, it has some images captured by the telescope and a life-size model of the 200-inch mirror that the telescope uses. The sign noted that the telescope’s visitor area was open so we hoofed it up there. Inside, there is a staircase to the next floor where there are only restrooms, and the next set of stairs goes to an observation area, a glassed-in room from which visitors can see the telescope itself. Some techs were working on cleaning the wheels on which the telescope rotates and we got to see it turn as it advanced to the next set of wheels to be attended to.
Back outside I took some photos and wished I had more time, a couple hours, so that I could do a sketch of it. Instead, I took lots of photos and might make a sketch from those. While I did that, Bill collected pine cones.
We rode back down the mountain.
Luckily, when we arrived at the construction zone, the pilot car was just taking a group down. From there, we headed to Temecula.
Temecula used to be this little country village on the 2-lane highway between San Diego and Corona. Back in 1988, I used to drive there from Long Beach, almost daily, as I was building a Subway sandwich shop in a strip mall there, one of 5 I was building across Southern California. (Yes, I did all kinds of stuff in a previous lifetime.)
Well, today, that area has Boomed, the capital “B” being intentional. It was a mass of housing tracts, shopping centers, and the type of stuff that gives “urban sprawl” is deserved bad name. I was thinking maybe of having lunch at that Subway but there was no way I could find it so, following the Google navigator, we hopped in I-15 and headed north.
Like yesterday, riding the “slab” is an experience all its own. Traffic was fairly heavy and there we a few times where it slowed to a near stop for no apparent reason. We passed through Corona and Norco and after that it was urban sprawl where, in my memory, it was all open fields. We exited the freeway looking for gas and found a Subway first so went in a grabbed sandwiches and sat outside where we could keep an eye on our bikes. As we parked, a guy came up and said he had some important information that we just had to know and were we interested. I figured that he was proselytizing or selling time shares and it turned out to be the former. He took “No Thanks” quite well and went on his way and we enjoyed our secular lunch.
After an uneventful gas stop we got back on I-15 and headed the Cajon Pass. This brought back a major memory. In about 1983 or so, I headed out on my Honda CB750 for a week of camping on the road. I was on I-15, headed up this same hill, and was passing a Greyhound bus when there was a big clunk from my engine. I pulled over and couldn't shift through my gears. The engine would run and after a bit I got it 3rd gear and got off at the next ramp and rode all the way back to Long Beach on surface streets that way.
Life was complicated at the time (trying to finish a college degree, buying a house, etc.) and the motorcycle got put aside. I had spent so much of the past 8-years riding that bike (over 50,000 miles) I sort of wondered what would fill in that time if I just didn’t fix it. Well, woodworking entered my life and our California bungalow got a remodel. Move ahead 37-years and, while I still do woodworking, I have a new bike and am back on the road. BTW, I still have the Honda and it is about halfway restored.
We headed up Hwy 395 and the first 20 miles or so was miserable. This area used to have 1 traffic signal but Victorville has sprawled and we must has hit two dozen traffic lights before we got into open country. This route takes up on the east side of the Sierra mountains across a terrain that is decidedly high desert. Joshua trees abound.
I was able to add another courthouse photo to my collection.
It was uneventful EXCEPT, we were approaching a railroad crossing and it was on a curve. When these come up I like to see if there’s going to be a big bounce so I can stand up on my foot pegs. I have my eye on the crossing and was only moderately aware of the traffic headed in the other direction and immediately notice this guy in white pickup trying to pass all those cars and a semi until the last second. He was on my side of the road and headed right for me. I had to swerve to right to avoid a head-on collision. I glanced in my mirror and Bill had done the same maneuver. That was really close. The guy in the truck deserves the Dumb-Ass of The Year Award.
We continued on and eventually arrived at a campsite, a BLM property in the middle of nowhere. It’s pretty nice and with my military interagency pass it is only $2.50 for the night.
It was a 371 miles day.
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