From Dana Point I took Hwy 74 east to I-15 south to Hwy 78 west to San Diego County Road S6. Round trip: 185 miles.
The Ride
What a difference one month makes. On Feb 1st I took off along this same route headed for Julian. The temperature that day was 43 when I left Dana Point and it never got above 55 all day. Today my destination was Palomar Mountain – the State Park and the Observatory. The exact same route as the ride to Julian except a quick left off of the 76 onto San Diego County S6 and straight up the mountain to the summit and the observatory.
Today when I left Dana Point at 8AM it was already in the mid 60′s and even at the top of the mountain with an elevation of 5550 it was still over 70. Once I started heading up the mountain there was snow on the ground but that’s not gonna last much longer.
There were tons of bikes out today: The Cruisers takin’ it easy and enjoying the ride and the boys on the Crotch Rockets, passing on blind curves at 80 MPH, one knee down just like they saw is some magazine somewhere. Quite honestly they were the biggest hazard out there today. The Cruisers were polite, the cars were well behaved but I’ll be damned it everyone of the CC boys were riding with a big chip on their shoulder. If I was lucky enough to see them in my mirror I’d just move over to the right and let them pass. Hoping I wouldn’t be the one to find them a mile up the road embedded in a tree or something. If I didn’t see them they seemed to need to blast past me and get as close to my bike as possible. More than just a few times I came around a corner to see one of these superheroes heading toward me in MY LANE! Nice…
Other than the ego riders it was a great trip. The road, S6 (about 10-12 miles long) is very narrow, very steep and very windy.
Palomar Mountain, CA
Once I reached the intersection of S6 & S7 there was a hip little corner with a gift shop, a mountain cafe called Mother’s Kitchen Restaurant and the Palomar Mountain Post Office. The restaurant menu was varied and reasonably priced. The food I saw on the tables looked great. I grabbed a killer Banana Bran Muffin and wandered through the tiny but eclectic gift shop called the Palomar Mountain General Store.
Palomar Mountain State Park
From there I took the three mile ride up S7 to the entrance of the state park. The entrance fee was $6 so I opted to simply take a picture of the sign.
Very near the entrance to the park was a vista that looked out over Northern San Diego County all the way to the ocean. It was a bit hazy to you can’t see the ocean in the pictures but it was a stunning view nonetheless.
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The Palomar Observatory
Back down S7 and left at the cafe I rode the 5 or 6 miles up to the Palomar Observatory. at the end of S7.
It’s free to go in and check out the cool exhibits in the gift shop as well as take the 1/2 mile walk up to and inside the Observatory itself.
I hadn’t been to an observatory since I was a kid and I had full expectations to see stuff like Mars and Jupiter and all that other cool stuff I remembered from science class but first off it was the middle of the day and second once inside the actual Observatory you climb a fair amount of stairs up a circular stair case to arrive at a room where you can see the Hale Telescope from behind a glass wall only. No star gazing for me.
Still it was quite impressive as was the building. It was so white I kept my shade on until inside.
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As I was coming back down the mountain at the end of S6 and about to merge on to the 76 west I had to yield to about 10 or 12 Cruisers coming down 76. Once they passed I merged and fell in behind them. Within about 5 minutes there were 7 or 8 other Cruisers that came up behind me.
