Motorcycle Wanderings: California's Pacific Coast and San Diego.

It was finally time for the first long adventure ride on my new to me FJR. With that in mind I set off on Wednesday April 28th, right after the big storm which rolled through Nor Cal on Tuesday, there were still trailing weather systems from the storm moving through the area, but the idea was to leave "rain or shine" and try to make the best of the conditions and push through those weather systems to drier conditions on the Central and South Coast of California.

Day 1:

Just as I was preparing to leave, the moment I pulled the FJR out on the driveway, it started to sprinkle…

It wasn't so bad, the FJR takes some rain in its stride effortlessly, a fact which I had heard often, but now had the chance to experience first hand. It rained off and on from Folsom to the Tracy junction on I-5, and then the weather seemed clear as far as the eye could see heading south on I-5, but I knew as I was turning onto Hwy 152 (Pacheco Pass) that I was turning into the storm for it poured almost all the way to Hollister, letting up sometime before the time I rolled into Mickey Dee's for a quick Breakfast and to use their facilities.

From here I took a slight detour off the boring Hwy 156 route to Hwy 101. I turned left on Salinas Road from Hwy 156. Salinas Road is a one-lane road, a bit rough in the beginning, but not quite a goat trail, just expect a lot of road patch work (not tar snakes) and a few pot holes spread about, the road eventually becomes the San Juan Grade, which turned to be a nicely paved and smooth road (still one lane) with some very fun turns and not another vehicle in sight – takes you through a lot of cattle farms and some pleasing scenery.

After this fun little jaunt it was a quick ride down the slab onto Hwy 1 and this is obviously where I immediately developed a severe case of shutterbug fever, which I will be gladly sharing with you here shortly.
The vistas progressively became more and more spectacular, although the road itself was also so much fun that I didn't stop at each and every turnout for pictures.
I will note here that this was my first ever trip down the California Central Coast along Hwy 1 (bike or cage) and I agree with Rich, I didn't realize what I had been missing…

Pulled to the side for these pictures..

Historic Rocky Creek Bridge

Trusty Steed…

Historic Bixby Bridge

There was a lot of construction on Hwy 1 this day, they were doing repairs and maintenance on bridges, I even heard they were building a new bridge, but that is hearsay and I didn't research to corroborate that, plus there was also landslide prevention/repair work going on. I talked to this very friendly fellow on about my 4th or so constructions stop along the route, I asked him if this was the last one or if there was more construction going on. He assured me this was the last, but alas, he was mistaken, there were 2 more construction stops after this one.

Here you go un-named stranger – if your wife is monitoring FJRForum, for whatever reason - she now knows that you were really working that day…

Another ride-by shot, blind shots with no regard to zoom or focus, but some of them turn out and I apologize for subjecting the reader to these, but I post some sparsely, or maybe not so sparsely, just for the effort (mine in taking them, yours for bearing with them)…

Some tourism spoilt "wildlife" incessantly begging for food. I didn't feed them anything, although I would have thought these guys would have fattened up already with all the cheese and crackers being fed to them…

Four legged beggar…

This one had wings…

And back to more vistas…

Yours truly...

You can barely see Hwy 1 winding up to the left..

More ride-by shots as Hwy 1 opens up to some nice long sweepers and not a LEO in sight…

These guys were having some fun; can you spot them to the right?

Approaching Morro Bay and you can see the three chimneys and Morro Rock dominating the scene…

Getting closer…

…and closer…

Finally here, this other-side of Morro Rock doesn't seem quite so photogenic…

Talked to this English couple who emerged from this eatery, I asked them what was good, they said they were disappointed in the Fish N' Chips (you hear that Fairlaner?) and that they suspected they were served Frozen crab, despite the "Fresh Crab & Shrimp" sign. Despite their not so rave reviews, I decided to give the place a try anyway, I asked the girl at the counter what would she would recommend and she mentioned the deep fried calamari, I think I had a mini heart-attack just thinking about it, so I opted for the "Healthier" Halibut sandwich with a side of French fries (Ha! So much for healthier!) to snack on..

The Morro Bay power station looms over the Morro Bay harbor..

I think this guy was doing the "50CC" (50CC is an endurance motorcycle challenge, it stands for Coast to Coast in 50 hours or less) run, think he will make it?

I was running late and my friends in Thousand Oaks were waiting on me for Dinner, so I decided to skip Foxen Canyon, so I guess I did not do everything right this time… I took the slab down Hwy 101 to Hwy 154 and took some ride-by's of the vineyards and horse ranches along the way…

Another mistake followed when I blew right past the Lake View drive for the County Park where you could imbibe some great views of the gorgeous lake.
I managed to find another Vista Point and immediately pulled over hoping for some views of the lake, but no such luck, the views were still impressive, however my point and shoot seems to have well…missed the point…

The weather man had been calling for 20-25mph Gale force winds all along the California Central and South Coast with wind gusts of up to 40mph, however I never really felt them on the FJR, which was sweet, and it was all good until I pulled over to take this shot overlooking Santa Barbara, put the baby in neutral, right foot on the rear brake and got ready to take my picture and Wham! The wind gust almost knocked me over, it was time to stop being foolish and put the bike in gear, turn it off and put the side stand down…

Gorgeous view of Santa Barbara!

Not much excitement from here to Thousand Oaks, unless you count Rush Hour traffic as excitement, my friends were graciously waiting for me in their beautiful home in Thousand Oaks, I had my own spot in the garage for the motorcycle and I had a beautifully appointed Guest room to myself with my own private and attached bath. It was like staying at a very upscale bed and breakfast. It also happened that were doing a small family celebration for their daughters birthday, and I felt honored to be included in the festivities and the great conversation which flowed well into the night before I finally decided to call it a night and slip into the covers for a well deserved good night's sleep.

Day 2:

Woke up bright and early at 7AM

the next morning and checked my messages and was glad to see a message from Redtail, saying he was available to lead me through the Santa Monica Mountains that morning - Awesome! We setup a meet-up place and time and he was kind enough to agree to ride over to where I was. My friends are early risers despite enjoying their "newish" retirement and they made a great breakfast for me - such class acts and I had a great stay!

Rode to the meetup spot a little early and Redtail rode in spot on time, we chatted for a little bit - checked out each others rides, confirmed our route for the day and then off we went...

On Portrero road heading towards Decker Canyon, Decker canyon was a blast - very tight and very fun twisties.

From Decker Canyon we swung a right on to Mulholland Hwy towards Hwy 1 and the ocean. This stretch of Mulholland Hwy had a lot of road debris to watch out for.

Reached the ocean and Redtail headed towards Neptune's Net...

The place was deserted as this was a Thursday morning (and they were not even open yet), we were the only two there. I hear this place is over-run by 100's of bikes and cars and the "stuntas" are spilling onto the median on Hwy 1 popping wheelies. But today, we were the only two posers around

Redtail..

Puppychow.. (Redtail's camera)

Dog's are not allowed, but I guess puppychow is OK? Didn't wait around to ask...

Off to Latigo Canyon from here - which was soon to become my favorite stretch of road in the Santa Monica mountains, are all Richard's fast? This one (Redtail) sure seemed to make me think so, but he laid some great lines for me to follow on Latigo Canyon and by the time we emerged onto Kanan Dume road I had had so much fun I was almost dizzy with excitement...

...but first I stopped for a quick shot of the ocean from the early part of Latigo Canyon.

Made our way to the famous (or infamous) Mulholland "Raceway".

Interesting read..

Rock Store .. without the crowds, or a million cars or bikes or Jay Leno...also I think the camera appears to remove about 5 inches off your height...

I had mentioned Topanga Canyon to Redtail so being the customer oriented tour guide he was, he lead me to Topanga Canyon Road, total cager trap with no way around them slow pokes, sorry for dragging you through here Richard!

We stopped for lunch in Santa Monica and enjoyed our meal and the conversation, look forward to seeing you at WFO Richard, bring the Mrs too!

Marched onwards to Del Mar through the Los Angeles slab, it was still early in the afternoon and the traffic was moving along just fine, with no unexpected cager trickery, as I was passing along Camp Pendleton - I noticed they were flying sorties right off the freeway, tried to snap a quick picture the last one for the day - here is the result...

Destination for the day - my friend's condo in Del Mar Heights. They had a previous engagement but were tracking me on SPOT and decided to stick around when they noticed I was going to pull up any minute, they set me up in my room and took off, leaving puppy with the run of the house, but I was tired this day and promptly fell asleep.

Day 3:

Took a short ride on Friday with a friend who rides an ST. It was a Del Mar -> Palomar Mountain -> Julian and back home route. My friend knows some nice back roads, without much traffic, I don't know which roads these were, I was just following him around, but some of those had some nice little McMansions...

... and some Casino's, for a second I thought I was in South Lake Tahoe or Reno...

It was fun until we got to Escondido (bleh), but the roads opened up once again after that, we took S Grade up Palomar Mountain and I had the major butt pucker of the trip.
We were going up the S Grade switchbacks at a reasonable pace and this kid in a ricer Acura Integra comes barreling down the mountain, my friend was past the corner already and I was about to enter it just when I see him approaching the corner, he swings into the turn as I start to move away, his rear tire oversteers and I am thinking this is it...fortunately for me it snaps back in line and he continues his death wish run down the mountain...Phew - close call!

We reach the observatory safe and sound..

This would be a good website to check out the history of the Observatory if you are interested... Palomar Observatory.

They had some interesting snippets on display at the Observatory, which is now also an Museum. It took them 11 years to polish the 200 inch mirror for this telescope. They were able to cast the 200 inch mirror on their second try and then spent 8 years polishing it (not including the interruption from WW II, which also resulted in training almost an all new workforce after the war was over). The mirror then took 2 days to transport up the mountain and then it took another 3 years once installed to polish the mirror for focus...

It was hard to take pictures inside the observatory, lighting, reflection etc made it really hard for most of the shots to come out, so I am sharing the ones which did turn out...

Before the days of air conditioning, the astronomers would sit in their "cage" through long hours in the night and it used to get very cold. When I was visiting in the daytime, the temperature inside the dome was about 42 F, so you can only imagine what it would be on a cold winter night…solution? 24V heated suits, think these would make good LD comfort suits?

From Palomar Mountain we headed towards Lake Henshaw on our way to Julian, you can see a glimpse of the lake in the background.

We are here…

We had a late late lunch in Julian, I was starving and the BBQ was good, there were some Renegade Rebels in attendance, but they left town before we did, on our way back from Julian we stopped at the Julian Pie shop and I found the bad-asses loading up their Goldwings/Cruisers into a massive trailer in search of the next town to "terrorize"…

Parting shot of the day… "Silly Yuppies trailers are for boats"…

Ahh almost forgot, on the way back from Julian, ditch Hwy 67 past Ramona and get on Highland Valley Road instead – two thumbs up!

Day 4:

No riding this day..

Day 5:

It was getting to the end of my trip, I will skip the report on Saturday as there was no motorcycling on Saturday and what happens in San Diego stays in San Diego and to protect the innocent and all that hog wash...what I will say is that by the time I left San Diego the next day for my return journey, it was already 1:15 PM in the afternoon and I still wanted to fit in Hwy 33 and Hwy 166 into my route to Arroyo Grande, where Tree Doc was waiting for me. Google map said 6 + hours, I was hoping I could do better, but which also meant very few picture stops...

Approximately 3 hours later I was exiting Hwy 101 onto Hwy 33, I saw a Blue FJR this day (Sunday, May 2nd) heading south out of Hwy 33 as I was heading north around 4:15 or 4:30PM. Hwy 33 was a total blast, Almost everyone was heading south and going back home and I was the only one headed north and I had a clean run all the way through, I was being very selfish lapping up that road porn and only stopped once to snap a token picture of that deliciously winding road...

In no time I was past the twisty, windy parts onto the straight stretch racing towards Hwy 166. Some of the scenery passing me by reminded me of Nevada...

Hwy 166 was boring until I reached the fast sweepers, no LEO's in sight on a Sunday evening - just perfect....it even seemed as if I was closer to the sun somehow, the camera doesn't lie...

Rolling into Tree Doc's driveway right about 6:30 PM or so, made good time

Such a stand-up guy, welcoming a riding brother he had never met before with big smiles and gracious hospitality, both him and Mrs Tree Doc were such a joy! He had brought his 27' trailer out of storage just for me and set it up with heating, hot water, nice big comfy bed and a refrigerator full of beer!

They took me out to a great Mexican Restaurant for some very good eating, drove me around Pismo Beach that night to show me the hot spots and then back home for more beer and motorcycling stories and next days ride planning before I retired to bed...

We started our ride Monday morning around 9AM, after Tree Doc made me a hearty breakfast of Tri Tip, Scrambled Eggs and Toast, can't thank him enough for his hospitality!

Here is Tree Doc leading the ride on his beautifully farkled SV650S sport-tourer.

Not many pics from this day as Tree Doc was filming with his GoPro. The plan was to avoid Hwy 101 as much as we could, so the route we took was Hwy 227 (Carpenter Canyon) to San Luis Obispo, from here we slabbed Hwy 101 to Hwy 58 exit and then caught the one lane Hwy 229 to Creston. Hwy 229 is where I passed Tree Doc after we made our way around a snake sunning itself on the road and I believe this is the road on which Tree Doc started lusting for the FJR!

Not sure which road this pic was taken...

From Creston, it was Hwy 41 back to Hwy 101 and then the quick slab to Indian Valley Road, another one lane beauty which we rode all the way to Hwy 198 / Hwy 25, by this time my homing beacon was strong and I was just racing home so again no pictures, but hopefully Tree Doc got some good video he can post.

We parted ways near the Hwy 198 / Hwy 25 junction, good to ride with you Tim! Ride again sometime soon I hope!